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WITHIN THESE WALLS 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


By 

RUPERT HUGHES 

i > 

Author of 

“SOULS FOR SALE,” “CLIPPED WINGS” 
“THE THIRTEENTH COMMANDMENT” 
“WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY” 



HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
19 2 3 





WITHIN THESE WALLS 

Copyright, 1923 
By Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the U.S.A. 

First Edition 


UO IT 


JUN -2 *23 


©C1A704777 






ILLUSTRATIONS 


As the Stage Swung Down into the City, He Pointed Out 
a Girl Strolling Along with a Greyhound on the Leash 
of a Blue Silk Ribbon. Frontispiece 

“How Wicked We Are! How Wicked!” . . . Facing p. 90 

The Sunlight That Made a Shimmering Aureole 
About Her Flashed in Her Eyes, Shining with 
the Tears of Rapture. “ 118 

“Swear That You Will Never Mention Jud 
Lasher’s Name to Anybody”. “ 156 










WITHIN THESE WALLS 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


CHAPTER I 

HE called that tulip tree “the bouquet of God,” because 
it was more like a Titan’s handful of flowers than a tree. 

Yet it stood a hundred and fifty feet high, and the stem 
of it was so large that a man and a girl together could just 
touch hands about its bole by stretching their arms to full 
length in a double embrace, and leaning their cheeks against 
its bark, deep-fluted as a Corinthian column. 

This afternoon it meant a torch of welcome on the peak 
of the last hill; and it was stirred into yellow flame by the 
breeze that stroked its multitudinous blossoms. 

Beneath it, the house looked small, cuddling in the shadow, 
its roof all pied yellow and green with the fallen saffron 
petals of the orange-stained tulip cups, with the stripped 
sheaths of leaf and flower, and the broad, blunt, glossy leaves, 
and the pistils and stamens shredded and powdery. 

To David RoBards the house was home, and never so 
much home as now that he fled to it with his bride from 
New York, and from the cholera that had begun another of 
its grisly pilgrimages about the world. Leaving its religious 
home in India and traversing Asia and Europe, it had finally 
stridden overseas to Canada; drifted across the lakes to the 
new village of Chicago, and descended the Mississippi to 
devastate New Orleans. In the meanwhile it had crept down 
the Hudson to where New York’s two hundred thousand 
souls waited helpless and shuddering. 

Invisible devils of pestilence were darting everywhere 
now, wringing the vitals of the city to an agony, and flinging 
rich and poor to the cobblestones in such foul and twisted 


i 


2 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 

anguishes that the scavengers recoiled, and the nearest of 
kin or of love shrank away with gorges rising and bowels 
melting, not with pity, but with fear. In Bellevue Hospital 
the dead lay on the floor so thickly strewn that the over¬ 
worked physicians could hardly move about among them. 
And the nurses detailed from the prison took to drink and 
fought across the beds of the dying or slept off their liquor 
on a mattress of corpses. 

New York was the prey of confusion. It was the prey 
of panic. The people were a-shiver like the leaves of the 
poplars that lined Broadway. The great street was paved 
all the way now to the farmsteads out at Twenty-third Street. 
The shops crowding in from Pearl Street had begun to pur¬ 
sue the homes. 

Broadway was ceasing to be a lane of homes. But the 
cholera was faster and fiercer than commerce. It had 
turned Broadway into a channel of escape. It was all 
fugitive with citizens fleeing from this new Pompeii whose 
fires were from within, whose lava seethed in the loins of its 
people. Half the people—a hundred thousand fled. 

The swine that had kept the roadway clean were fright¬ 
ened into the byways by the frightened men and women. 
The cattle droves that had gone lowing along Broadway in 
hundreds were thrust aside by the human herds; and their 
dusty wardens cursed the plague. 

The street was full of funerals, lone paupers in carts, 
merchants with retinues of mourners on foot, moving slowly 
up to the burial ground for plague victims in Washington 
Square. Only men, of course, went to the funerals, but 
women joined the flight. The quick crowded the dead into 
the flushed gutters, and the hackney coaches, the heavy 
busses, the light wagons from Ford, the four-horse stages, 
the Tilburys, chairs, gigs, and phaetons were hurried north 
in a jumble of wagons and drays filled with baggage and 
household effects, as well as wives and children. 

The city was moving once more out to Chelsea and other 
rural retreats. A hotel of pine boards had been run up in 
a Greenwich wheatfield in two days, and it held already five 


WITHIN TJffESE WALLS 3 

hundred exiles. But Greenwich was not far “enough: for 
RoBards and his precious bride. She had been too hardly 
won to be lightly risked. 

He had bought the two bays and the Godwin carriage 
for the escape, and when he checked his horses under the 
tree before her home in Park Place, she was waiting on 
the step. 

He had sent ahead his man, Cuff, and her woman, Teen— 
both of them manumitted only five years before by the New 
York emancipation law of 1827 , both still and forever 
slaves at heart. They were to prepare his house in the 
country for the honeymoon. It was up in Westchester, 
beyond White Plains, near Robbin’s Mills. The stage could 
have carried the bride and groom, but it was booked for 
days ahead. 

So now he helped her in and bestowed her packages. For 
all his fear, it was wonderful to feel the exquisite elbow 
of pretty Patty Jessamine in his palm, and to know that 
henceforth she was Mistress David RoBards. 

He wished that the crowd of young and old bucks who 
had besought her in marriage since she was fifteen, might 
have been drawn up in review along Broadway to see him 
carry her off. Most of all he wished that Harry Chalender 
might have witnessed his triumph, for he had dreaded 
Chalender so much among his rivals that he was still sur¬ 
prised at his success. He wondered a little that Chalender 
had made no resistance to his conquest. 

He whirled the steeds, and turning his back on the Colum¬ 
bia College Building looming through the grove behind him, 
sent them galloping towards City Hall placid in its marble 
serenity just aheajjl, its flower beds and grasses protected 
from cattle and pigs by a new picket fence. 

Patty squealed and clutched RoBards’ arm, as a decently 
cowardly young lady ought, when the carriage spun to the 
left, and RoBards snapped his whip to warn away a 
foolish girl who swept the crossing, and one of the pes¬ 
tiferous boys who thrust loco-foco matches under every 
nose. 


4 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


He almost overran the pretty girl who sold hot corn, and 
a shriek ended her sweet sing-song, “Lily white corn! Buy 
my lily white corn! ,, 

Progress was slow among the lumbering busses and stages. 
Besides, the horses must be dealt with sparingly. They 
had twenty-seven miles ahead of them before they should 
reach White Plains, and five or more beyond that. And 
the paved streets would end at the newly opened Madison 
Square. 

There was much to terrify the eyes in their progress. 
Dear friends were seen among the funeral followers, and 
among the fugitives many who had mocked at the prophets 
of the plague. But Harry Chalender was not to be seen, 
though RoBards did not mention him, of course. The 
foreign critics were ridiculing the Yankee passion for ques¬ 
tions, but even here bridegrooms did not ask their brides 
about their bitterest rivals. 

The thin and wretched poplar trees along Broadway 
were drooping under the hot midsummer sun, and the grass 
was yellow in the yards; for water, the greatest need of 
New York, was more than usually sparse. It was so expen¬ 
sive that sailing vessels from Europe brought with them 
casks enough to take them back again. 

The pumps at the corners were crowded with negroes and 
paupers carrying pails, and with gentlemen pausing to 
drink or to splash their hot faces. The cisterns were dry in 
the backyards, for no rain had blessed the roofs. 

The bride smiled wanly at her husband as they passed 
Contoit’s Garden, for they had often gone together into its 
cool shadows. It was as near as they could come to a 
Watteau idyl in the circumspection of Manhattan proprie¬ 
ties, and he had leant upon the bare board and dabbed at 
a lemon ice (slyly drenched with surreptitious cognac by the 
negro waiter) while she dipped the famous Contoit ice cream 
from an earthenware dish with a black pewter spoon, and 
crumbled the poundcake with fingers that seemed too deli¬ 
cate for any more difficult office. In his infatuated gaze she 
wore the grace of Versailles as she carried her spoon curvily 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


5 

to lips like curled rose-petals under the multiple shade of a 
black scuttle hat adrip with veils and studded with a huge 
peony that brushed the low branches of the living ceiling. 
But that was for memory to cherish in a bright niche on the 
black wall of New York’s fate. 

Even when they reached Niblo’s Gardens out at the edge 
of civilization, in the suburbs about Houston Street, the 
trees that hung their branches across the high board fence 
held out no promise of comfort within. The dust that 
Billy Niblo had come so far to escape was whipped into 
clouds by innumerable hooves, and fell back in the listless 
air to stifle the lungs and sting the eyes. Few couples ven¬ 
tured into the bowers where Mrs. Niblo purveyed ice cream 
to ladies, and port negus to their beaux. 

On these woeful nights, in the flower-scented, flower- 
lanterned gardens, the gleaming lanterns of multi-colored 
glass flattered not many cheeks, brightened not many eyes. 
Even the Ravels, who were later to play here for three 
hundred nights, had just met with disaster; for though 
they ravished New York with the grace of their acrobatics, 
their writhing contortions, their dancing, and most of all 
by their amazing antics upon the new and bewildering in¬ 
vention of roller skates—even they could not bring the 
morose populace to the Park Theatre, and the cholera closed 
them out after two weeks of vain battle with the general 
despair. 

There were sad memories for the RoBards twain on every 
hand. Herealong they had walked and wooed; at this house 
or that they had met for dinner or dance, and now the homes 
where carriages had been packed for balls, were hushed 
with dread, or shaken with the outcries of woe. 

It seemed good to turn away from Broadway at Madison 
Square, and join the dust-misted Post Road, with its huge 
stages lurching perilously, and racking the bones of the 
tossed passengers bound for Harlem, New Rochelle, Rye, 
and all the towns beyond to Boston. 

From here on, the highway ran through farmland, broken 
now and then by dwellings, or by warder tre6s that sheltered 


6 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


mansions in the garden deeps; but the heat was ruthless 
and beat with oven-glow upon grain and grass praying in 
vain for relief. 

Past the cattle marts of Bull’s Head Village, on up Mur¬ 
ray’s Hill, and down through the village of Odellville, their 
horses trotted doggedly, threaded McGowan’s Pass, and 
climbed Breakneck Hill, the scene of so many fatal mishaps 
that Patty was in a panic. She clung to her husband’s 
arm with such anxiety that he could hardly manage his 
team. But to their surprise they got down alive into the 
plains of Harlem. 

RoBards had counted on resting his bride and his horses 
at Harlem Village while they took dinner there at three. 
But Harlem was in even direr estate than New York, and 
a pallid negro, who brought water to the horses, stammered 
a warning against the accursed spot. Families had been 
annihilated by the cholera in a night. Under the big willow 
by the church a corpse had been found, and of the coroner’s 
jury of twelve, all were dead in a week save one. The 
firehouse at Harlem was a fearsome place, as RoBards could 
see; for it was a morgue where two overworked black men 
nailed together pine boxes, and nailed the dead into them in 
dozens. The rumor had spread that in their haste they were 
burying some of the villagers alive in the churchyard. 

Patty implored her husband to drive on, and he lashed 
the horses to a run to outrace her fears. He would not have 
hurt animal or man, except for her; but for her he was 
strangely capable of anything, cruel or sublime. 

Not long the gallopade lasted before the jades fell back 
into a dogged trot. They pushed on through Bronxdale, and 
rejoined the Boston Post Road at McTeague’s Caves. Soon 
a great flying stage of the new Concord type, with its huge 
body swung on great leather thoroughbraces, rolled by at 
better than the wonted six miles an hour. It passed Ro¬ 
Bards’ weary horses, and hid them and its own seasick 
passengers in a smoke of dust. 

Coaches like these had been established in New York only 
a few months before, to run on rails. RoBards had ridden 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


7 

on one of the first trips, the whole distance from Prince 
to Fourteenth Street. The rails made it easier for the pas¬ 
sengers and the horses. Indeed, the legislature had incor¬ 
porated a wonderful company that proposed to build a rail¬ 
way from the Harlem River to White Plains, and pull the 
coaches with steam engines, like those on the Mohawk and 
Hudson Railroad, which had gone tearing through space at 
the incredible speed of twenty miles an hour. Some doctors 
said it would blind the passengers to see the landscape shoot 
past at such an ungodly speed. But this was the age of 
wonders. 

If the Boston stages threw up such a blinding dust, what 
would the steam engines do? 

It was good to turn off at the head of Black Dog Brook, 
and take the less frequented highway to White Plains, past 
Tuckahoe, and through the scenes that Mr. Cooper had 
described in his novel, The Spy. RoBards had read it as 
a boy one Saturday night, and it had kept him awake until 
he heard the Sunday church bells toll, and heard the chains 
rattle as they were drawn across Broadway to keep the 
ribald infidels from disturbing the orderly by driving horses 
on Sunday. 

Mr. Cooper was in Europe now, quarreling with some 
and being praised by others. He had been highly spoken 
of by a French critic named Balzac, who was also writing 
novels, if RoBards were not mistaken. Yet nearly everybody 
said that America had no literature! 

In the midst of RoBards’ disquisition on such themes, 
Patty wailed: 

“I’m hungry!” 

It was the female bird chirping to her mate, and RoBards 
felt both proud and pitiful. Fortunately he could descry, 
not far ahead, a row of dormer windows breaking the roof 
of a long low house that he recognized as Varian’s Tavern 
at Scarsdale. A pock-marked milestone set there in 1773 
mournfully announced that they were already XXI miles 
from New York. 


8 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


A great barn yawned for the tired horses, and they 
quickened their gait as they sniffed its plentiful fodder. 

Being a bridegroom, RoBards had worn his second-best 
suit, made for him only a little while before by Tryon and 
Derby, and it had reduced him to the fashionable immobility 
in which a gentleman of the mode almost rivaled a lady. 

His black frock was so tight across the chest, so short 
of waist, and so constricted of armhole, that he could hardly 
breathe, or drive the horses. The pantaloons (if one must 
mention them) were so snug to his skin, and the straps 
beneath his boots drew them so taut, that his nether limbs 
were all pins and needles, and when he stepped down from 
the carriage, he could hardly endure the exquisite distress. 

When he put up his arms for Patty, he heard the ominous 
hiss of a slipping seam in a sleeve. His poor bride was 
asleep all over, and could hardly rise from her seat or direct 
her fall across the wheel into his arms. 

They staggered tipsily to the tavern doorway, where Ro¬ 
Bards checked her at the sill to point out the saber-scars 
still gashing the woodwork. The British had made them 
when they were plundering and pursuing the rebels along 
this very road nearly sixty years before. 

In the tavern lounged a crowd of loud and smelly Western¬ 
ers who had goaded their herds all the way from Ohio, and 
were waiting here to haggle with the cattle-dealers from 
New York. But the cattle-dealers had their own hides to 
think of. 

In the fields about the tavern hundreds of horned pedes¬ 
trians were content to graze at ease, while the cholera made 
New York a human slaughter-house. They had walked a 
long way to die, and they were in no haste. 

The inn’s good host, Colonel Varian, veteran of the War 
of 1812, gave the city travelers a welcome all the heartier 
for the contrast between Patty Jessamine and the disgusted 
and disgusting drovers, who bellowed their orders for his 
ale as if they had caught their voices, as well as their fra¬ 
grance, from their cattle. 

In a secluded nook Patty forgot to be exquisite, and ate 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


9 


with the sincerity of hunger, and made fatigue an excuse 
for sipping a noggin from the brandy bottle that was a 
necessary part of all tableware. Then she prinked a little, 
and left at Varian’s what dust she had absorbed on the road 
hitherto. And so they drove on. 

The pad-pad of the horses’ feet, the hot air, the winding 
miles of uphill and down, brought her great eyelids over the 
dear eyes wearied with terror, and she slept at last against 
her husband’s shoulder. He had wanted to discourse to her 
of the historic places they passed; for this ground was classic 
with Washington’s retreats to victory; these fields and 
creeks had been clotted with the blood of patriots. But his¬ 
tory had never interested her, though it was RoBards’ 
passion—next to her. 

He felt strangely like a father carrying a daughter home 
from school, though he was not more than eight years her 
senior. But she was such a child! though already entering 
seventeen. He gazed down at her admiringly, and her head 
had fallen back until she seemed to gaze up at him, though 
her eyes were closed and he knew she slept. 

In her poke bonnet her face was like a fragment of bisque 
at the bottom of a basket. The brows and the arched eyelids, 
the tiny path along the bridge of her nose, the curled nos¬ 
trils, the incredible grace and petulant pathos of her lips, 
severed a little as she panted, and the whorl of her chin, 
were of too studied a perfection, he thought, to have grown 
merely by any congress of blood and flesh. 

He could hardly endure not to bend and kiss her, but 
that would have brought her eyes open and he could not 
study her as now, when she lay before him like some rare 
object of vertu, some priceless thing in tinted Carrara that 
he had bought overseas and was hurrying to his private 
gallery, its one gem, and never to be shared with the public 
gaze. 

It seemed that only now he had a first moment of leisure 
to review the surprise of her capture. She was his wife 
almost before he dreamed that he had any hope of winning 


10 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


her at all. It would have been ungallant but quaintly truth¬ 
ful to say that she had carried him off on this odd elope¬ 
ment, in which the fleeing couple were man and wife, whom 
no one pursued. 


CHAPTER II 


This was no such runaway match as that famous affair 
of a cousin of hers, who had stolen from a masked ball with 
a forbidden suitor, had crossed the Hudson, and ridden forty 
miles on horseback in the night to find a parson to marry 
them. 

That bold foray against the respectabilities had revealed 
how easy it was for forbidden young Romeos to creep into 
the parlors of the city Capulets and steal thence their Juliets. 

But that elopement had the excuse of thwarting parental 
tyranny. This was a flight from Sodom condemned. 

When RoBards first pleaded with Patty to marry him 
and be gone from the accursed town, she had smiled 
drearily. 

“You don’t want me to run away like Lot’s wife?” 

“Yes! yes!” 

“But she died looking back, and I’m afraid I’d meet her 
fate. I’d cry myself into another pillar of salt, and become 
only another milestone on the Post Road. Would you like 
me like that, Mister RoBards?” 

She had somehow never learned to call him by his first 
name, before they were married. And by some stranger 
mystery of shyness, after they were married, she dared the 
“David” only on occasions of peculiar emotion. Even after 
she bore him children, she called him “Mister RoBards.” 

She had laughed away his alarm, though her merriment 
was sickly. And then her uncle had gone with the other 
members of the Board of Health to inspect the quarantine 
station established at Staten Island against the infected 
foreigners, swarming overseas in sailing vessels like vast 
unclean buzzards; and in two weeks every member of that 
board was dead save one; and he was not her uncle. 


n 


12 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


This had ended her laughter in terror. She had de¬ 
nounced the authorities for the ignominy of her uncle’s 
fate. Wealthy as he had been, his body was carried out to 
the old Potter’s Field in Washington Square, and buried 
in that notorious spot hitherto devoted to the paupers, the 
criminals, and the overripe fruit of the gallows tree. 

Then one day a nameless corpse was found in Park Place, 
before her very door; a cousin of hers that she loved was 
called to the inquest; and nine of the twenty on the coroner’s 
board were dead in a few days, and her cousin was one 
of them. 

Patty was ready then to flee anywhere ; but she could not 
persuade Harry Chalender to escape, and she vowed that 
she would not go without him. RoBards felt a cholera of 
jealousy burning his very vitals as he realized that his wife 
had seemed more afraid of leaving Harry Chalender than 
of the plague. 

But Harry Chalender scorned to fly and RoBards would 
not leave town while Patty was there, even though she re¬ 
fused his love. He had just resigned himself to a life 
without her, and was hoping that the pestilence would end 
his suffering, when she came to him. 

Only yesterday afternoon it was! And she came running 
along the street to his house—defying all the gossips in a 
greater fear! 

He was living just below City Hall Park, on the east side 
of Broadway, in a once fashionable home that had become 
a fashionable boarding house. He happened to be standing 
at his window brooding when the sight of a woman running 
caught his eye. He was astounded to see that it was Patty 
Jessamine. Everybody was, for everybody knew her beauty. 
RoBards was down the stairs and at the front door just 
as she crossed Broadway, dodging among the tangled traffic. 

She paused to lean against the pump that stood at the 
corner there, not heeding that her tiny shoes and the ribbons 
about her ankles were bedabbled with the mire, for she cow¬ 
ered from a staggering, groping wretch who seemed to turn 
black as he reeled, clutched at her wide skirts, and sprawled 


WITHIN .THESE WALLS 13 

in the last gripe of cholera. She had to step across him to 
escape and RoBards ran to catch her as she swooned. 

Her scream of dismay ended in a stuttering whisper: 

“Marry me, Mr. RoBards! and take me away before I 
die.” 

His exultance was so great at the undreamed-of benison 
that he felt a howl of wolfish triumph straightening his 
throat. So he had won her away from Harry Chalender! 
How? What did it matter? He cried, 

“God knows how gladly!” 

He stopped a passing hackney coach and took her home. 
She was afraid at first to get out of the cab, for she ex¬ 
plained that her father was stricken with the cholera, and 
her brother had died in the house that afternoon. 

He reassured her as best he could, and gave her servants 
orders to pack her things, and make her ready for such a 
wedding as he might improvise in a city whose ministers 
were worn out in body and soul with funeral ceremonies. 

In mad haste he had somehow accomplished the count¬ 
less details that made her his in the eyes of State and 
Church. It was not till long after that she had grown calm 
enough to repent her frenzy of fear, and the irreparable 
calamity of a marriage at such speed. 

She had been reared to look forward to her wedding 
day as the high festival of her life, and had devoted num¬ 
berless hours to visions of herself in her vast, creamy satin 
bridal robe from Whittingham’s, with a headdress like a 
veiled tower set upon a coiffure molded by Martell’s own 
deft fingers, a pair of Lane’s tightest satin boots, and gloves 
six buttons high. She had insisted that she should receive 
the newest novelty, a bridal bouquet, and that the wedding 
cake should be as big as a cathedral. 

And now she was married and all, and never a sign of 
splendor, only an old veil and a wreath of artificial orange 
blossoms; only the ring that the groom had all but forgotten 
to bring. 

Still, she was alive, and that was something; that was 
everything; that was far more than could be said of many 


14 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


a pretty friend of hers who had been blooming toward 
wifehood a week ago, and was now a blighted thing in a 
box from a coffin warehouse. 

As RoBards stared down at her when he could risk a 
glance away from the rough road, she seemed to be almost 
waxen with death. Her cheeks were so pale, her breathing 
so gentle, that she might be drifting from him even now. 
The little distance between ’ sleep and death gave her an 
especial dearness, and he hated himself for the meanness 
of remembering his question after the preacher had gone 
and the Tew friends had dispersed: 

“How does it happen that you didn’t ask Harry Chalender 
to your wedding?” 

He had asked it teasingly, in a spirit of mischievous 
bravado. But she had groaned: 

“Harry ? Harry is dying! Didn’t you know it ? The old 
slave-woman at his house told our black man.” 

This had cast ashes upon the fire of his rejoicing. But 
the flames leaped through them again. For he had won. 
She was his, and it would be impious to complain that his 
enemy had been stricken. 

Fie felt a sudden dread of his bride. Could she be so heart¬ 
less, so selfish—ah, well, women were weak things and men 
must be strong for them. 

The good thing, the glorious thing, was that he had 
her his. She was Mrs. RoBards now, and she was asleep 
against his arm. The harsh ruts of the road jolting her 
tender body kept her bosom tremulous as a heap of white 
hyacinths fluttered by a soft breeze of summer. 

With the rocking of the carriage her velvet cheek slid 
up and down on his shoulder. He was startled to note at 
length that his sleeve was pink and her inner cheek whiter 
than the other. So she powdered and painted! And he had 
never known it! He would have said that only the wantons 
that crowded the town or the shameless flirts were discontent 
to leave their skins as God made them. Yet his own bride— 
but—she was a wife now. She would be a mother in time. 
And she would have no temptations to vanity henceforth. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


15 

He studied her a little closelier, as if, in marrying her,, he 
had indeed taken her from beneath the veil of romance into 
the keen sunlight of truth. The delicate forehead had never 
a wrinkle, even between the eyebrows of such delicate pen¬ 
manship. If she had thought hard and fiercely on the prob¬ 
lems of life and religion and natural philosophy, there would 
have been lines there. Well, one did not marry a woman 
for her wisdom. But what sorry tortures she endured to 
make herself a doll! She denied herself not only the glory 
of flight in the realms of thought, but even the privileges; of 
motion. 

She was the voluntary prisoner—as Fanny Kemble would 
say—of “tight stays, tight garters, tight sleeves, tight waist¬ 
bands, tight armholes, and tight bodices.” She took no 
exercise, wore veils and handkerchiefs to ward off the glare, 
and preferred to sit in the dark till the sun was gone, lest 
it brown her pallor. Yet she went in little flat satin slippers 
through the snow, and bared her shoulders to icy winds that 
made a man huddle in his heaviest fear-naught. 

But her foolishness somehow made her all the more 
fragile, all the more needful of gentle dealing. And he 
loved her pitiably. 

She was still asleep when he made out from a hilltop 
the spires of the ancient courthouse, and the new academy 
in the half-shire village of White Plains. RoBards wanted 
to tell his wife that she need not be lonely out here, for she 
would be only a few miles from this lively community, 
already containing several hundred people, a boys’ school, 
and a newspaper. But he let her sleep, fearing that, after 
all, she might not be impressed. She slept past the great 
sight of this region, Washington’s old headquarters, only to 
wake a little later as the carriage was flung and whipped 
about in a road of particular barbarity. 

“Where are we, Mist’ RoBards ?” she cried, and gasped to 
learn how far they had driven. He watched her wild little 
glances with fascination. She seemed to flirt and coquet 
with the very landscape. 

She glanced with amazement at the wildness around her, 


i6 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


the maples and wild rhodendendrons, and all the Westchester 
paradise of leaves and flowers crowding in the little-used 
highway, brushing the fetlocks of the horses, falling back 
like sickled wheat from the scythe of the wheels, and bend¬ 
ing down from above to flail the carriage top with fragrant 
leaf-laden wands. 

And now at last she spied his great tulip tree, and the 
Lilliputian house beneath it, and she was weary enough to 
welcome the welcome they vouchsafed. 

The carriage rolled across a brief wooden bridge above a 
merry water. 

“That’s old Bronck his river,” he told her. “And these 
hills were the stronghold that Washington fell back to after 
the British drove him out of the White Plains. Ignorant 
old General Howe had ordered his navy to sail up the Bronx, 
and when the ships could not even find the little creek, 
Howe feared to advance any further. He sneaked away to 
capture Fort Washington by treachery. 

“Our tulip trees won the praise of Washington while 
the great man was here. Perhaps that very tree is the son 
of one of those that shed its blossoms on his tent. Tulip 
trees are hard to persuade; they won’t grow where you plant 
them. But this one came to live here of its own accord when 
my father built this house for my mother. 

“Strange, isn’t it, my darling, that they should have come 
out here—in 1805, it was—to escape from another pestilence? 
It was the yellow fever then. It had been breaking out 
every few years before, but that year it was frightful, and 
my mother was a bride then just as you are now. 

“They went back to New York because she grew lonely, 
but they came out again with the next fever summer. I was 
born here. Ten years ago I came out for a while. That 
was another yellow fever year. Even you remember that 
far back, don’t you ?” 

“Oh, yes, Mist’ RoBards. That was when they moved 
the Post Office, the Customs House, the banks, the news¬ 
papers, the churches—even my father’s store, out to Green- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


i7 

wich Village. But we went back in the late fall. When 
shall we go back now?” 

“God knows!” he groaned. “I should be glad to stay 
here with you forever.” 

“It’s lonely, though—a little, don’t you think, Mist’ 
RoBards?” 

“Not with you. We’d best forget New York, It’s a 
doomed city now.” 

“Oh, don’t say that!” 

“Dr. Chirnside called this a visitation of God’s judgment. 
It’s not the first. Every few years the warning comes; 
the people run away and repent, and live in simple villages 
or on their farms; but when the plague has passed over 
they go back; they throw open their gaudy homes, wash off 
the mark of the angel of the Passover on the bloody lintels 
of their doors, and start up the carnival again. The men 
get drunk, the women tipple and flirt. They dance all night, 
gamble, carouse, divorce, live beyond their means, neglect 
the poor. Look at the churches on Sunday! Hardly a man 
there; all women, and not many of them. Not one in ten 
goes to church Sundays.” 

She broke in on his tirade with a childish puzzler: 

“What causes the plague, do you think, Mist’ RoBards?” 

“Who can tell? It is God’s judgment, the pious men say. 
The doctors call it an exhalation, a vapor, a miasma; but 
those are only words to wrap ignorance in. God only knows 
what causes the plague.” 

“Harry Chalender says—said-” 

The word was the toll of a passing bell. The change of 
tense was like the taking of a life. It silenced her a dread¬ 
ful while. Then she tried to banish the specter with an 
impersonal phrase: 

“Some people say that cholera comes from bad water, 
and New York has no good water. I can hardly drink the 
bitter stuff from the pumps, and I can taste the old log 
pipes in the water that we buy from the Manhattan Com¬ 
pany’s well. The rainwater from the roofs is worse. No 
wonder everybody drinks brandy, and there is so much 



i8 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


drunkenness. Harry—many people want to go out into the 
country, all the way up to the Croton or the Bronx, and bring 
the pure streams down into the city, and do away with the 
pumps and cisterns.” 

RoBards laughed. “That’s an old idea. They talked 
about it after the yellow fever of 1798. But they found it 
would cost a million dollars, and gave it up, and let that old 
villain of an Aaron Burr dig his Manhattan well in the 
heart of the town. Things are so much higher now that 
it would cost five millions; and it would take years to lay 
the miles of pipes. No, no, they’ll never make our wild little 
Bronx a New York citizen. How much better to come up 
here into the hills and drink its water where it is born.” 

“Poor New York!” she sighed, and her head was turned 
so far about as she looked off to the South that her round 
chin rested on the round of her shoulder; the somber irises 
of her eyes were lost in the deep lashes, where there was a 
hint of a tear, and her throat was a straight line, taut as a 
whip-cord, from the tip of her tiny ear to the ivory slope 
of her breast. 

Her beauty was marble in the repose of intense meditation 
upon the city abandoned to its fate. He drank it in devotedly 
before he laughed: 

“Have you turned into Lot’s wife already, or have you 
the power to turn those big eyes toward the house? It’s 
pretty from here.” 

She startled a little, like the frightened gazelle which 
was the model of ladylike conduct. Her head came round 
slowly, and she flicked the dew from her eyes with a quick 
flutter of the lids. Then the arc of her red lips changed 
from concave to convex as the sorrowful droop became a 
warm smile. 

A dark thought flitted through his mind that at best she 
found her future prison less dismal than she had imagined 
it; and that her fatigue would have made her greet even a 
jail with relief. 

She had sat so long on so rough a voyage that she 
could hardly rise. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


19 

“My limbs have gone to sleep,” she said, and blushed at 
such a bold allusion. She hardly knew her husband well 
enough yet for such carelessness. 

But he felt a dart of sharp happiness at such an indelicacy. 
This was a wild adventure. A wilder was to follow, for, 
as he lifted her across the front wheel he was forced to 
observe not only her prunella slippers entire, but a flash of 
the white stocking above the ankle where the crossed thongs 
were knotted. 

He was dizzied by the swoop of her beauty. She came 
to earth and his arms in the billow of her huge silken skirt, 
and her vast “elephant” sleeves, with a swirl of ribbons 
everywhere. 

An incense came with the goddess stooping to the ground, 
and she leaned a moment along his body, the captive of his 
arms, and he thrust his face so deep into her hat that its 
brim knocked off his own tall beaver. He let it lie in the 
dust, though it was a deep-piled St. John of the latest bell. 

He kissed her full and fair, and his arms found her as 
soft, as spicy, and as lithe in her voluminous taffeta as a 
long bough of tulip blossoms smothered in leaves. But the 
sharp points of his collar, protruding above his stock like a 
pair of spear-heads, hurt her cheek and threatened to blind 
her, and she squealed. He loved to hear her squeal. 

A rude guffaw of unmannerly laughter brought him back 
to daylight and indignation, as he heard old farmer Albeson 
roar: 

“Wall, wall! I never seen two bodies with one head 
till now. Why, it's Master Dave! and his female bride!” 

The farmer’s wife cackled at the wit of her spouse, and 
Patty giggled with well-bred reserve. She treated the old 
rustics with the manner she held toward the blacks who had 
been her father’s slaves when she was younger. But though 
the Albesons were quick to remind any presumptuous prigs 
that they were as good as royalty in the great and only 
republic, they found Patty’s tyranny as pretty as a baby’s. 

They led the way into the house. David’s black man Cuff 
took the horses to the stable, and Patty’s brown woman 


20 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


Teen carried the luggage up the steps and up the stairs to 
the long, lone room under the eaves, that grazed the four 
high tops of bedposts carved as if the mahogany had been 
twisted or braided. 

The first duty was to wash off the dust of the travel. 
When Patty lifted the scuttle hat from the clutter of her 
curls before the mirror, she screamed with dismay: 

“I’m blacker than Teen!” 

RoBards himself poured water into the bowl and boasted 
of its clarity. 

“Not much like the soup you get from your city cisterns, 
eh?” 

“It’s cold, though,” she murmured. 

She put him out of the room while she changed her dress 
to a simple, loose house-robe. She slipped out of the steel 
cuirass of her stays, and the soft sleeves drooped from her 
shoulders along her arms. There was a girl’s body bewitch- 
ingly hinted inside the twinkling wrinkles. 

After the return to simple, clinging things of the brief 
French republic and the early Empire, the fashions had been 
departing more and more from any respect for God’s image 
beneath. When Patty came down the steps in something 
that was rather drapery than a group of balloons, RoBards 
was amazed to find how human she was after all, how 
Grecian, somehow; how much quainter, littler, dearer. 

She apologized for her immodesty, but gave weariness as 
her excuse. 

“I should have fainted in my room—if you had been 
there,” she said, with an audacity he had never dreamed 
her capable of. “But where’s the profit of a swoon if you 
fall into the arms of another woman—and a black one at 
that ?” 

“You don’t have to faint to get into my arms,” he riposted 
as he crushed her close. 

“I’ll faint if you don’t let me out of them, Mist’ RoBards,” 
she gasped. 

Then they went in to tea. She made hardly a pretence 
of eating. Even if she had not been trained to fast at table 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


21 


like a lady, she would have been too jaded with the travel. 

Afterward he walked with her on the narrow piazza in 
the rising moon, and he felt so wonderfully enriched by her 
possession, so intimately at home with her, that he asked her 
if he might smoke. 

“I beg you to, Mist’ RoBards,” she said; “I love the 
flavor of Havana.” 

He took from the portmanteau-like lining of his hat one 
of the cigars he carried there with his red silk handkerchief, 
his black gloves, and any other small baggage that might 
otherwise bulge his pockets. As he lighted it with one of 
the new spiral sulphur matches, he remembered that Harry 
Chalender had smoked much and expensively. 

Harry Chalender even smoked cigars on the street and 
in office hours, though no gentleman was supposed to do 
that, and it would have ruined a less secure young man 
financially and socially. Some of the banks would not lend 
money to a man eccentric enough to smoke on the street 
or to wear a mustache. But Harry had dared even to grow 
and wear a mustache down Broadway. It was to pay a bet 
on an election, but it shocked the more conservative. 

His only effeminacy was his abstention from chewing 
tobacco and from snuff. Patty often praised him for not 
spitting tobacco juice about over her skirts and carpets, as 
so many of the gentlemen did. She had one dress quite 
ruined on Broadway by a humorist’s ejaculation of such 
liquor. 

Because of Chalender, RoBards flung down his cigar and 
glared at it where it lay in the grass, as smouldering as his 
sullen jealousy, and glared back like an eye, watchful and 
resentful. 

Only a little while he was privileged to stroll his porch 
with his arm about Patty Jessamine’s unfortressed waist, 
for she tried to smuggle away a yawn under the cover of a 
delicious sigh, and then protested that she could not keep 
her eyelids open. 

“No wonder!” he answered, “they’re so big!” 

She kissed him on the cheek and drifted away before 


22 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


he could retaliate. He walked up and down alone a while, 
breathing the incense of her possession in the quiet air, still 
faintly flavored with the perfume she employed. 

Then he went in and up the dark stairs to find her. She 
lay asleep along the bed as if she had been flung there. 
She was lying across the border of the candle’s yellow feud 
with the blue moonlight; they divided her form between dim 
gold and faint azure. She had fallen aslumber where she 
fell, and he stole close to wonder over her and to study 
her unblushing beauty. 

Her face was out of the reach of the candle’s flickering 
gleam, and the moon bewitched it with a mist of sapphire. 
Through the open window a soft breeze loitered, fingering 
her curls, lifting them from her snowy neck and letting 
them fall. And from the tulip tree a long, low branch, 
studded with empty sconces of living brass, beat upon the 
pane with muffled strokes. 

“Beautiful! beautiful!” he whispered—not to her, nor 
to himself, but to a something that seemed to watch with 
him. He longed to be worthy of such beauty, and wondered 
if she—the she inside that little bosom—were worthy of 
such treasures, such perils, as her face and her fascinations. 

His heart ached with a yearning to shelter her from the 
evil of the world, the plagues that would rend that lacy 
fabric, the fiends that would soil its cleanliness. Such a 
petulant, froward, reckless little imp it was that dwelt inside 
the alabaster shrine! Such loyalty she had for the gaudy 
city and its frivolities! Such terror of the pestilence, yet 
such terror of the great, sweet loneliness of this beloved 
solitude! 

Else, why had she stared back along the road with a sor¬ 
row, with a regret that seemed to trail almost like a ribbon 
reaching all the way to town? Would she ever be divorced 
from the interests that he could neither understand nor 
admire ? 

Well, she was his for a while—for now—and more 
his own while she slept than while she was awake, for 
when she was awake her eyes kept studying the plain, dull 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


23 


walls, and his plain, dull self; wondering, no doubt, what 
substitute he could provide for the dances and picnics and 
romances that crowded the days and nights in the city. 

He bent to kiss a cheek like warm and pliant porcelain, 
and to draw the quilt across a shoulder escaped from its 
sleeve, and all aglow, as if light itself slumbered there. 

He tiptoed from the room and down the stairs and into 
the August night. He stepped into a cataract of moonbeams 
streaming down upon the breathing grass and the somnolent 
trees, the old walls and fences, and the waft flowers in the 
unkempt garden. 

A wind walked to and fro among them like a prisoner in 
trailing robes, a wind that seemed to be trying to say some¬ 
thing, and could not, because its tongue had been plucked 
out. But it kept trying inarticulately to mumble a warning 
—against what?—the hazards of life and love perhaps, and 
the inevitable calamities that follow success. 

He had succeeded in winning Patty Jessamine. But what 
else had he incurred? 


CHAPTER III 


LEAVING the mansion of such a night and entering a 
mere house, was less a going in than a going out. The night, 
vast as space, was yet closer than the flesh, more intimate 
than the marrow of the bones or the retina that sat behind 
the eyes and observed. 

When he left the roomy dark at last he found Patty still 
asleep, or pretending to be. He could not quite feel sure 
of her. He never could. It was only of himself and of 
his idolatry that he was forever sure. 

If she slept indeed it would be cruel to wake her. If 
she affected slumber, it was because she prayed to be spared 
his love. In either case he had not the courage to invade 
her retreat, or compel her withdrawn presence to return. 

This sublimity of devotion was ridiculous. But he 
achieved it. 

The morning found him still a bachelor. He was amazed 
at first to hear women’s voices in another room quarreling; 
it was Patty berating her stupid maid. 

When he met her at the breakfast table she was serene 
again, and held up her cheek like a flower to be pressed 
against his lips. She had taken command of the household, 
imperious as a young queen, a-simmer with overbubbling 
pride like a little girl suddenly hoisted to the head of the 
table in her mother’s absence. 

Womanlike, she found a strange comfort in the discovery 
that the china in the house was good, the linen of quality, 
and the silver dignified. She had erudition of a sort, in a 
field where he was blankly ignorant. She recognized at 
once that the gleaming coffee pot was from the elegant 
hand of Paul Revere himself. 

“I didn’t know he was a silversmith,” said RoBards. 

24 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


25 


“What else was he famous for?” Patty said. 

This dazed him as a pretty evidence of the profound differ¬ 
ence between a male and a female mind. He started to tell 
her about what Paul Revere had done when she began 
to praise his mother’s taste in china. She laughed: 

“You never saw the pieces of china I did, did you, Mist’ 
RoBards?” 

“You did china? You never showed me any!” 

“It was nothing to boast of. But when I was a little 
girl at Mrs. Okill’s school, I drew a pattern of a tea-set— 
a wreath of sweet peas and convolvulus surrounding my 
initial and a lamb holding a cross. My cousin Peter, who 
was going out to China as a supercargo, said he would take 
it with him and have it put on a tea-set. He made fun of 
my drawing and wrote on the design under the lamb: 'This 
is not a wig, but a lamb.’ And in about a year the set came 
round the Horn in one of my uncle’s ships. But the foolish, 
long-tailed apes in China had put on every cup and saucer 
the words, ‘This is not a wig, but a lamb.’ I cried for days, 
and broke every piece to flinders.” 

She could laugh with him now, and when she laughed he 
found a new excuse for a new adoration. He was not gifted 
in frivolity, and the old house seemed to store up her mirth 
for dark days when remembered laughter would make a 
more heart-breaking echo than the remembered drip of 
tears. 

Breakfast left his soul famished for her love, but she 
would not be serious. She flitted and chirped like a bird 
that lures a hunter away from her nest. 

She seemed to evade him, “to lock herself from his re¬ 
sort,” to be preparing retreats and defences. He was hu¬ 
miliated and shamefully ashamed to find that she was not 
yet his wife save by ceremony and appearance. He had 
sharply rebuked the old farmer for a crassly familiar joke 
or two upon a consummation devotedly to be wished, but he 
would have hung his head if the truth were known. 

Then finally, suddenly, strangely, she was his, and in a 
manner of no sanctity at all, in a mood of eddying passion, 


26 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


like an evil intrigue. Many of the bachelors, and many of 
the married men, kept mistresses, but Patty was his wife. 
And yet he felt a bewildering sense of infidelity to some¬ 
body, something. Was it because she seemed afterwards to 
wear a look of guilt? Was she thinking that she was dis¬ 
loyal to that man Chalender, whose ghost perhaps by now 
had left his body and followed her up into this citadel ? 

If she seemed to feel guilty, she betrayed also an ex¬ 
hilaration in the crime, a bravado he had never imagined her 
capable of. 

He was the one that suffered remorse, and he came to 
wonder if it were not after all man and pot woman who had 
invented modesty and chastity, and who upheld them as 
ideals which women accepted rather in obedience than in 
conviction. 

Evidently woman must be controlled and coerced for her 
own salvation. 

There had been recently a flurry of a few insane zealots 
who had coined a new phrase, “Women’s Rights,” and had 
invented an obscene garment named after a shameless Mrs. 
Bloomer. In Boston a few benighted wearers of this 
atrocity had been properly mobbed off the streets. They 
were even less popular and less likely to succeed than the 
anti-slavery fanatics. 

RoBards was glad that Patty was at the other extreme 
from such bigots. He would rather have her a butterfly 
than a beetle. He loved her for saying once: 

“I want to be ruled, Mist’ RoBards, if you please!” 

And by God he would rule her—and for God he would 
rule her, and save her, soul and body. If either failed it 
would be his fault. 

Pride in her meekness, fear for her frailty, pity for her 
lack of intellect, and wonder at her graces, were intertwisted 
with moods of a groveling unworthiness of her, of upstar- 
ing rapture before her mystic wisdoms. 

Per purity seemed to be replenished after the storms of 
love, as the blue sky came back innocent and untarnished 
after a black cloud and lightning. Quick tempests rose and 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


27 

passed, and a fleet angelic quality brought her down to earth 
on and in a rainbow from heaven. 

He found himself studying her as a botanist studies a 
flower. In their loneliness they dwelt as on a desert island. 

But she could ride a little and he had good saddle horses, 
and she found many occasions for excursions to White 
Plains. They rode often together up to the Northcastle 
post office, where the stage flung off the New York papers 
and the letters. She had a brave beauty as she rode, her 
long skirt like a spinnaker at the horse’s flank, her veil flying 
from her hat, her silhouette one with the horse’s back, 
where her arched thigh rose above it and clasped the saddle 
horn. 

The news from the city was blacker every day, and she 
was more and more content with her exile, until a letter 
came to tell her that Harry Chalender had not died after 
all, but had somehow won his duel with the Asiatic death. 
The same post brought her word that her father had also 
passed the crisis. She made a great noise of delight in the 
recovery of her father. But she said nothing more of Harry 
Chalender. 

And so his name rang aloud in the back of RoBards’ 
mind. He was hard to please: if she had exclaimed upon 
Chalender’s escape he would have winced. Yet her silence 
was unendurable. 

In a ferocious quarrel that began in nothing at all, and 
was, on his part, only the outcry of a love too exacting, 
because it was too hungry, she flung at him: 

“I needn’t have married you, Mist’ RoBards! You made 
me. You kept at me.” 

“Hush, sweetheart!” he pleaded, “you don’t want the 
servants to hear.” 

“What do I care for servants? If I hadn’t been such 
a fool as to listen to you, I might have married Harry 
Chalender.” 

“Hush!” he stormed, “or, by-” 

“By who, what?” she screamed, staring up at him as if 



28 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


in desire as in need of a beating. When he could not smite 
such beauty, she cried at him: 

“This house! This terrible tomb ! My father would have 
called it this damned house. Well, it’s nothing but a mad¬ 
house to me, one of those places where they lock people 
up so that they may go insane really.” 

He choked. It was bad enough for a lady to swear, for 
his wife of all ladies to swear, but there was a sacrilege 
in her curse upon this home. 

This anathema and this bridal rebellion must be kept 
secret. Walls had ears but no lips to speak. Servants, 
however, had both long ears and large mouths; and negroes 
were blabbers. 

And so for the sake of quiet, he crushed back his own 
wrath and his sense of her wickedness, and fell on his knees 
before her, imploring pardon as an idolater might prostrate 
himself before a shrine whence he received only divine 
outrage and injustice. And she was appeased by his sur¬ 
render ! And lifted him up in her arms amorously! 

He resented her caresses more than her cruelty, but he 
preferred them because they were private and murmurous. 
He had an inherited passion for secrecy. 

One day he learned that she had ordered her horse saddled 
without consulting him, or inviting him to ride with her. 
He sent the nag back to the stables, and when she came out 
habited, she was furious. 

“You can’t ride alone about these woods,” he said. 

“Why not ? Who’s to harm me ?” 

“What if the horse bolted and flung you against a rock, 
or fell on you or dragged you? Besides, there are many 
bad characters hereabouts. Only a mile down the road is 
a family called Lasher.” 

“Those poor wretches in that tumbledown hut? Who’s 
afraid of them?” 

“They’re descendants of the Cowboys and Skinners who 
used to murder and torture people here during the Revolu¬ 
tion. We’re in the old Neutral Ground, where those hyenas 
used to prey on patriots and Tories alike. They burned 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


29 


homes, hung old ministers up by the neck to make them tell 
where their money was, mistreated women—did everything 
horrible. Major Andre was captured by some of them 
just a few miles from here. Those Lashers are sons of one 
of the worst of the Skinners, and I wouldn’t trust you 
among them.” 

When she insisted, he said, “You shall not go!” 

Three days later he read in his Herald that Mr. Harry 
Chalender was so far recovered from the cholera that he 
had gone to recuperate at his farm near the village of Sing 
Sing, not far from the country seat of Mr. Irving, the well- 
known writer. 

Sing Sing was only a few miles away. RoBards handed 
the paper to his wife, with an accusing finger pointing to 
the notice. She met his eye with a bland gaze, and said: 

“I knew it. That is where I wanted to ride. But you 
wouldn’t let me.” 

“Why didn’t you ask me to go along with you?” 

“You don’t like Harry.” 

This logic dazed him. 

“Because I don’t like him, you are to visit him secretly?” 

“But his mother and sisters are there, Mist’ RoBards! 
Am I to forsake my every friend?” 

“Friend!” he groaned. 

And that made her laugh. She flung her arms about him 
and said: 

“The only time you’re funny is when you’re mad, Mist’ 
RoBards. I love you jealous.” 

A few weeks later when he and Patty came back from a 
tour of their fields with the farmer, they saw a cariole (a 
“carry-all,” as she called it) hitched to the post in front of 
the gate. On the porch they found Chalender, pale, lean, 
weak, but still smiling. 

The cry that escaped Patty’s lips was so poignant with 
welcome that RoBards’ heart went rocking in his breast. 

If Chalender had been in his usual health, RoBards might 
have killed him. It was, oddly, wickeder to kill an ill man 
than a well one. 


30 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


He wanted to challenge the fellow to a duel, but dueling 
was against the laws of the nation, and latterly against the 
more powerful laws of fashion. Besides, what excuse could 
he give for a challenge? 

And the scandal of it! The newspapers were diabolically 
scandalous nowadays; foreign travelers said they had never 
imagined anything so outrageous as the American news¬ 
papers. 

When RoBards saw Patty drop down in front of Chalen- 
der and hold his hand, he had an impulse to shoot the dog 
dead. But he could not stain Tuliptree Farm with blood. 

While he waited for the stableman to take the horses, he 
could see that Chalender’s manner with Patty was intimate, 
emotional, intense. He was probably bewailing his loss of 
her. RoBards felt that the innocent old house was depraved 
by such insolence, but in order to deny his wife the luxury 
of another festival of his jealousy, when he came up on 
the porch he greeted Chalender as cordially as he could, and 
complimented him on his appearance—which was altogether 
too hale to please RoBards. 

Harry Chalender usually suited his talk to his company, 
and the gallant became at once the man of affairs. 

“That’s the Bronx down there, isn’t it, Dave? We ought 
to have it in New York now. It would put an end to this 
cholera. That’s one reason why I’m up here in this soli¬ 
tude. New York is dying of thirst; we’ve got to have water; 
we’ve put it off too long. But nobody can decide what to do. 
The conservative crowd says the well water that was good 
enough for our fathers is good enough for us. But our 
fathers died in great agony, and we’re doing the same. The 
New York water is good enough for cholera and yellow 
fever. It’s a fine thing, too, for Greenwich Village, and 
other far-off points that the whole town runs away to 
every few summers. But New York has got to get good 
water and plenty of it—or move out of New York. 

“Funny, isn’t it, how people hate to be saved? I was 
reading that when Pontius Pilate brought water into Jerusa¬ 
lem, the Jews rose in a mob and demanded somebody’s 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


3i 

life—as they did on a certain other famous occasion. And 
no doubt it will be devilish hard—pardon me, Patty!—to 
persuade the New York mob to take water—and pay for it. 

“You could divide the town into two parties, the Drys 
and the Wets. And we Wets are at war among ourselves. 
One party wants to get a supply from the Passaic River; 
some favor our Croton; some lean toward your Bronx.” 

RoBards answered with dubious irony: 

“I’d thank them to lean the other way. If New York 
lays hands on our classic stream, I’ll rise in a mob myself.” 

Chalender offered an argument he probably supposed to 
be irresistible: 

“You could sell out your holdings at a vast profit, and 
get very rich without a stroke of work. I’m casting about 
for a few quiet investments. If I only knew which way the 
cat would jump, I could do very handsomely by myself.” 

RoBards answered coldly: 

“Different people have different standards of honesty.” 

Patty gasped at the directness of this stab, but Chalender 
laughed: 

“And some people call that honesty which is really only 
an indifference to opportunity. Most of these starving farm¬ 
ers up here would shout with joy if I offered them twenty- 
five dollars an acre. If I sold it later for a hundred, they 
would howl that I had cheated them. But think how much 
more gracefully I should spend it.” 

RoBards nodded. “As for grace, you could have no 
rivals.” 

Chalender did not wince; he did not even shrug. He 
went on: 

“But the thing will have to be decided by an election.” 

“You can always buy votes. One of the inalienable rights 
of our citizens is the right to sell their birthrights.” 

“Yes, but it takes such a pile of money to buy enough 
birthrights. Nobody can vote without owning real estate, 
and property gives people expensive notions. That’s why 
I am in favor of universal suffrage. I should be willing even 


32 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

to give the ladies the vote—or anything else the darlings 
desire.” 

RoBards was hot enough to sneer: 

“In a ladies’ election you would bribe them all with a 
smile.” 

“Thanks!” said Chalender, destroying the insult by accept¬ 
ing it as a compliment. “But let me have a look at your 
Bronx, won’t you ? As an engineer it fascinates me. It is 
the real reason for my visit to-day.” 

This thin duplicity made even Patty blush. RoBards 
bowed: 

“Our sacred Bandusian font is always open for inspection, 
but it’s really not for sale.” 

“Not even to save New York from depopulation?” 

“That would be a questionable service to the world,” 
RoBards grumbled. “The town is overgrown already past 
the island’s power to support. Two hundred thousand is 
more than enough. Let the people get out of the pest-hole 
into the country and till the farms.” 

“You are merciless to us poor cits. No, my dear RoBards, 
what New York wants she will take. She is the city of 
destiny. Some day the whole island will be one swarm up to 
the Harlem, and it will have a gigantic thirst. Doesn’t the 
Bible say something about the blessedness of him who 
gives a cup of water to the least of these? Think what 
blessings will fall on the head of him who brings gallons of 
water to every man Jack in the greatest of American cities! 
Quench New York’s thirst and you will check the plagues 
and the fevers that hold her back from supremacy.” 

“Her supremacy will do the world no good. It will only 
make her a little more vicious; give crime and every evil a 
more comfortable home.” 

“Is there no wickedness up here in Arcadia?” 

“None compared to the foulness of the Five Points.” 

“Isn’t that because there is almost nobody up here to be 
wicked—or to be wicked with?” 

“Whatever the reason, we are not complaining of the 
dearth.” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 33 

“That’s fine! It’s a delight to find somebody content with 
something. But show me your Bronx, and I may do you a 
service. You won’t object if I find fault with the stream, 
because then I shall have ammunition to fight with against 
your real enemies, who want to dam the brook at Williams’s 
Bridge and pipe it into town. You and I should be the best 
of friends; for I want the people to look to the Croton for 
their help. It will enable New York to wash its face oftener, 
and drink something soberer than brandy. And it will enrich 
me through the sale of the miserable lands that have grown 
nothing for me but taxes and mortgage interest.” 

But RoBards was not content, and he was a whit churlish 
as he led Chalender along the high ridges, and let him re¬ 
mark the silver highway the river laid among the winding 
hills of Northcastle, down into the balsam-snowed levels of 
the White Plains. 

Little as RoBards approved his tenacious guest, he ap¬ 
proved himself less. He felt a fool for letting Chalender 
pink him so with his clumsy sarcasms, but he could not find 
wit for retort or take refuge in a lofty tolerance. 

He suffered a boorish confusion when Chalender said at 
last, as they returned to the house and the cocktails that 
Patty had waiting for them on the porch: 

“I agree with you, David. The Bronx is not our river. 
I can honestly oppose its choice. But it’s a pretty country 
you have here. I love the sea and the Sound and the big 
Hudson, but there is a peculiar grace about these inland 
hills of Westchester. I shall hope to see much of them in 
the coming years.” 

“Yes?” 

“Yes. I shall bid for a contract to build a section of the 
Croton waterway. That may mean that I shall spend sev¬ 
eral years in your neighborhood. My office will be the 
heights along the Hudson. That is only a few miles away 
and a pleasant gallop. You won’t mind if I drop in upon 
you now and then when I am lonely?” 

Though Chalender ignored Patty’s existence in making 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


34 

this plea, RoBards felt that it was meant for her. But what 
could he say except a stupidly formal: 

“It will be an honor to receive one of the captains of so 
great an enterprise.” 

“Thanks! And I can count upon always finding you 
here ?” 

Now RoBards amazed himself when he answered: 

“I fear not. We came up only to escape the cholera. 
When that is over, we shall return to New York. I have 
my law practice to remember.” 

He could feel, like hot irons in his cheek, the sharp eyes 
of Patty. He knew what she was thinking. He had said 
that he wanted to dwell here forever. And now he was 
pretending that he was only a brief visitor. 

Instead of gasping with the shock of her husband’s per¬ 
version, she snickered a little. It was as if he heard a 
sleighbell tinkle in the distance. But someone else was in 
that sleigh with his sweetheart. 

He could not understand Patty. He seemed to please her 
most by his most unworthy actions. He wondered if she 
had scented the jealousy that had prompted his words, and 
had taken it once more as an unwitting tribute to her. 

He thought he detected a triumphant smile on Chalender’s 
face, and he longed to erase it with the flat of his hand. 
Instead, he found himself standing up to bow in answer to 
Chalender’s bow, like a jointed zany. 

The inscrutable Patty, when Chalender had driven out of 
sight of the little lace handkerchief she waved at him, turned 
to her husband with sudden anger in her face. He braced 
himself for a rebuke, but again she confused him by saying: 

“The impudence of Harry Chalender! Daring to crowd 
in on our honeymoon,! It was splendid how you made him 
understand that we RoBardses don’t welcome him here.” 

“Did I? Don’t we?” stammered RoBards, so pitifully 
rejoiced to find her loyal to him and to their sacred union 
that he gathered her in his arms, and almost sobbed, “Oh, 
my dear! my sweet! my darling!” 

Though she was as soft and flexile as a shaft of weeping 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


35 


willow, somehow she was like a stout spar upholding him in 
the deep waters of fear, and he felt most ludicrously happy 
when she talked nursery* talk to him and cooed: 

“Poor, little David baby wants its Patty to love it, 
doesn’t it?” 

He could not answer in her language, but he felt a divinity 
in it, and was miserably drenched in ecstasy. And she had 
used his first name! 


CHAPTER IV 


BY and by the summer sifted from the trees and ebbed 
from the sky. The honeymoon passed like a summer, in 
days and nights of hot beauty, in thunder-salvos of battle, 
in passions of impatient rain. 

For a while the autumn was a greater splendor, a transit 
from a green earth starred with countless blossoms of scarlet, 
purple, azure, to a vast realm of gold—red gold, yellow gold, 
green gold, but always and everywhere gold. All West¬ 
chester was a treasure-temple of glory. Then the grandeur 
dulled, the gold was gilt, was only patches of gilt, was 
russet, was shoddy. The trees were bare. Sharp outlines 
of unsuspected landscape came forth like hags whose robes 
have dropped from their gaunt bones. The wind grew 
despondent. Savor went with color; hope was memory; 
warmth, chill. 

Something mournful in the air reminded RoBards of a 
poem that Mr. Bryant, the editor of the Post, had written a 
few years before: 

“The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, 

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown 
and sere; 

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie 
dead; 

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.” 

When he quoted this to Patty, her practical little soul was 
moved, as always, to the personal: 

“Your Mr. Bryant writes better than he fights, Mist’ 
RoBards. Only last year, almost in front of our house, I 
saw him attack Mr. Stone, of the Commercial Advertiser, 
with a horse-whip. Mr. Stone carried off the whip. It was 

36 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


37 

disgusting, but it brightened Broadway. Oh, dear, does 
nothing exciting ever happen up here ? Wouldn’t it be won¬ 
derful to stroll down to the Battery to watch the sunset 
and cross the bridge to Castle Garden, and hear the band 
play, and talk to all our friends ? And go to a dance, per¬ 
haps, or a theatre ? The Kembles are there setting the town 
on fire! And am I never to dance again? I was just learn¬ 
ing to waltz when the cholera came. I sha’n’t be able to 
dance at all unless we go at once.” 

It shocked RoBards to think that marriage had not 
changed the restless girl to a staid matron. That she should 
want to waltz was peculiarly harrowing, for this new and 
hideously ungraceful way of jigging and twisting was de¬ 
nounced by all respectable people as a wanton frenzy, 
heinously immoral, indecently amorous, and lacking in all 
the dignity tha^ marked the good old dances. 

But he was in a mood to grant her anything she wished. 
She had a right to her wishes now, for she was granting him 
his greatest wish; a son and heir was mystically enfolded 
in her sweet flower-flesh, as hidden now as the promise of 
the tulip tree in a bud that hardly broke the line of a 
bough in the early spring, but later slowly unsheathed and 
published the great leaf and the bright flower. 

So he bade the servants pack her things and his, and they 
set out again for New York. 

Now the tide flowed back with them as it had ebbed with 
them. The exiles were flocking once more to the city, and 
new settlers were bringing their hopes to market. A tide 
of lawyers and merchants was setting strong from New 
England, and packs of farmers who had harvested only fail¬ 
ure from the stingy lands, counted on somehow winnowing 
gold on the city streets, where sharpers and humbugs of 
every kind would take from them even that which they had 
not. 

The drive to New York was amazingly more than a mere 
return along a traveled path. Though they had gone out 
in a panic, they had been enveloped in a paradise of leaves 
and flowers and lush weeds, as well as in a bridal glamor. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


38 

Now they went back under boughs as starkly bare as the 
fences of rail or stone; only the weeds bore flowers, and 
those were crude of fabric as of hue. And the hearts of 
the twain were already autumnal. Their April, June, and 
August of love were gone and November was their mantle. 
Patty’s orange blossoms were shed, and they had been arti¬ 
ficial, too. 

Below White Plains the road was a-throng with cattle 
that frightened Patty and the horses. When they were clear 
of these moving shoals, they came into the Post Road where 
the stages went like elephants in a panic. But Patty found 
them beautiful. She rejoiced in the increasing crowds, and 
as the houses congregated about her, and the crowded streets 
accepted her, she clapped her hands and cried: 

“How good it is to be home!” 

This sent a graveyard chill through RoBards’ heart, for 
it meant that home to her was not in the solitude of his 
heart, but in the center of the mob. 

Home was to her more definitely the house in Park Place, 
her father’s house to which he must take her till he found 
another lodging. Her father and mother greeted her as a 
prodigal and him as a mere body servant—which was what 
he felt himself to be. 

The chief talk was of the cholera and its havoc. Three 
thousand and five hundred dead made up its toll in the city, 
but the menace was gone, and those who lived were doubly 
glad. The crowds in the streets showed no gaps; there were 
no ruins visible. New houses were going up, narrow streets 
being widened and the names changed. 

It was only when the Sabbath called them to church, or 
some brilliant performance took them to see Fanny Kemble 
and her father at the Park Theatre, and they inquired for 
one friend or another, that they learned dreadfully how many 
good friends had been hurried feet first to Washington 
Square, whence they would never return. 

Dinners were few, since nearly every family wore mourn¬ 
ing for someone; but gradually the gayety returned in full 
sweep. The dead were forgotten, and the plans for pre- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


39 

venting a return of the plague were dismissed as a tire¬ 
some matter of old-fashioned unimportance. The pumps 
and cisterns were no longer blamed for the slaughter of the 
innocents. 

And now Patty must go into eclipse gradually. She grew 
more and more peevish. When she complained that every¬ 
body worth while was moving uptown, RoBards bought a 
house in St. John’s Park, just south of Canal Street, and 
only a little distance from the Hudson River. The house 
was new and modern, with a new cistern in the rear. Only 
a few steps away was a pump supplied with water from 
the new city water works in the salubrious region of 
Thirteenth Street and Broadway. There was a key that ad¬ 
mitted the family to the umbrageous park, behind whose 
high fence there was seclusion. 

There was something aristocratic and European, too, about 
the long iron rail fence that framed the entire square, the 
same in front of every house, and giving them all a formal 
uniform, a black court dress. 

But even aristocracy palled. Patty found but a brief 
pleasure in the privilege of walking there at twilight, and 
she dared not venture out before dusk. It was chill then 
and she shivered as she sat on a bench and breathed in the 
gloom that drooped from the naked branches like a shroud. 
She did not want to be a mother yet, and she faced the ordeal 
with dread, knowing how many mothers die, how few babies 
lived, for all the pain of their long preparation. 

The winter was cold and she complained of the dark of 
nights, though her husband multiplied the spermaceti candles 
and the astral lamps till her room was as dazzling as an altar. 
He filled the bins in the hall closet with the best Liverpool 
coal and kept the grates roaring. But she wailed of morn¬ 
ings when he had to break the ice in the water pitcher for 
her and she huddled all day by the red-hot iron stove. She 
made her servants keep it charged with blazing wood, until 
RoBards was sure that the house would be set on fire. 

When spring came again and released grass, birds, trees, 
souls, flowers, the very air from the gyves of winter, she 


40 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


was so much more a prisoner that she herself pleaded to be 
taken back to Tuliptree Farm. If she could not meet people 
she did not want to see them pass her windows, or hear 
them laugh as they went by in shadows of evening time. 
On the farm she could wander about the yard unterrified 
and, with increasing heaviness, devote herself to the flower¬ 
beds. She fled at the sight of any passerby and was 
altogether as hidden and craven as only a properly bred 
American wife undergoing the shameful glory of mother¬ 
hood could be. 

She was smitten at times with panics of fear. She knew 
that she would perish and she called her husband to save her 
from dying so young; yet when he got her in his arms to 
comfort her, she called him her murderer. She accused 
him of dragging her into the hasty marriage, and reminded 
him that if he had not inflicted his ring and his name and 
his burden upon her she could have gone with her father 
and mother this summer to Ballston Spa, where there was 
life and music, where the waltz flourished in rivalry with 
the vivacious polka just imported. 

But even in her most insane onsets she did not taunt him 
now with the name of Harry Chalender. That was a com¬ 
fort. 

One day Chalender drove up to the house, but she would 
not see him. Which gave RoBards singular pleasure. 
Chalender lingered, hoping no doubt that she would relent. 
He sat out an hour, drinking too much brandy, and cursing 
New York because it laughed at his insane talk of going forty 
miles into the country to fetch a river into the city. Chalen¬ 
der wanted to pick up the far-off Croton and carry it on a 
bridge across the Spuyten Duyvil! 

When he had left, Patty, who had overheard his every 
sentence, said: “He must be going mad.” She was absent 
in thought a while, then murmured as if from far off: 

“I wonder if he is drinking himself to death on purpose, 
and why ?” 


CHAPTER V 


ALL summer the water-battle went on in town, but with 
flagging interest. Colonel DeWitt Clinton threw his power¬ 
ful influence into the plan for an open canal from a dam 
in the Croton down to a reservoir to be built on Murray’s 
Hill. Even Clinton’s fervor left the people cold. When he 
pointed out that they were paying hundreds of thousands of 
dollars every year for bad water hauled in hogsheads, they 
retorted that the Croton insanity would cost millions. When 
he pointed out that the Croton would pour twenty million 
gallons of pure water every day into the city, and declared 
that New York water was not fit to drink, the answer came 
gaily that it did not need to be, since the plainest boarding 
house kept brandy bottles on the table. 

One old' gentleman raised a town laugh by boasting that 
he had taken a whole tumberful of Manhattan water every 
morning for years and was still alive. And yet the dream 
of bringing a foreign river in would not down, though"the be¬ 
lievers in the artesian wells were ridiculed for “the idea of 
supplying a populous city with water from its own bowels.” 

The cholera had brought a number round to the West¬ 
chester project, but the cholera passed in God’s good time. 
It would come back when God willed. Plagues were part 
of the human weather like floods and drouths, and not to be 
forefended. 

In any case Patty was busied with her own concerns. 
Her baby was born on Tuliptree Farm before her husband 
could get back from White Plains with the doctor, though 
he had lashed his horses till the carryall flung to and fro 
like a broken rudder. 

The son and heir was a girl, and in the hope that she 
would be an heiress they named her after Patty’s Aunt 

4i 


42 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


Imogene, whose husband had recently died and left her a 
fleet of vessels in the Chinese trade. 

For a time instinct and pride in the flattery of people 
who cried that the child was its mother’s own beautiful image 
gave the tiny replica a fascination to Patty. She played 
with it as if it were a doll, and she a little girl only pretend¬ 
ing to motherhood. 

But she tired of the bauble and turned the baby over to 
the servants. Her Aunt Imogene cried out against her: 

“Nowadays women don’t take care of their babies like 
they used to when I was a girl. In the good old-fashioned 
days a mother was a mother. She was proud to nurse her 
children and she knew all about their ills and ailments. I 
had eleven children and raised all of them but six, and I 
would no more have dreamed of hiring a nurse for them 
than I would have I don’t know what. But these modern 
mothers!” 

Criticism had no power over Patty, however. She ad¬ 
mitted all that was charged against her and simply added 
it to the long list of grievances she had against her fate. 
RoBards often felt that this was cheating of the lowest 
kind. It left a man no means of either comforting distress 
or rebuking misbehavior. 

As soon as the baby could be weaned from her mother 
to a nurse, Patty made a pretext of ill health and joined 
the hegira to Saratoga Springs, which was winning the 
fashion hunters away from Ballston Spa. She traveled 
with some friends from the South who brought North a 
convoy of slaves and camped along the road, preferring that 
gypsy gait to the luxury of a voyage up the river on the 
palatial steamboats, in which America led the world. 

During that summer RoBards was both mother and father 
to the child, and Immy’s fingers grew into and around his 
heart like the ivy that embraced the walls of the house. He 
was bitter against his wife, whose fingers had let his heart 
slip with ease and indifference. 

Yet, by the time Patty returned from taking the waters 
in the North, he was so lonely for her that their reunion 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


43 


was another and a first marriage. He found a fresh de¬ 
light in her company and learned the new dances to keep her 
in his sight and out of the arms of other men. 

By one of Nature’s mysterious dispensations, this girl 
with the soul of a flirt and a gadabout had the bodily fertility 
of a great mother. To her frank and hysterical disgust 
heaven sent her a second proof of its bounty, which she re¬ 
ceived with an ingratitude that dazed her husband—and 
frightened him, lest its influence be visited on the next hostage 
to fortune. If the child should inherit the moods of its 
mother it would come into the world like another Gloster, 
with hair and teeth and a genius for wrath. 

But the child arrived so placidly that the doctor could 
hardly wring a first cry from him by slapping him and dip¬ 
ping him into a tub of cold water. And he wept almost 
never. What he had he wanted. When it was taken from 
him he wanted it no more. He chuckled and glowed in 
his cradle like a little brook. He gave up his mother’s 
breast for a bottle with such lack of peevishness that it was 
almost an act of precocious gallantry. They named him 
Keith after an uncle. 

Keithkins, as too often happens in a world of injustice, 
made it so convenient to neglect him that his chivalry must 
be its own and only reward. Patty left him in the country 
—“for his own good”—and went earlier to New York than 
in the other autumns. There she plunged into a whirlpool 
of recklessness. 

She seemed to welcome every other beau but her husband. 
She would not even- flirt with him. She said he was too 
dangerous! 

She laughed at his jealous protests against the worthless 
company she affected. But when he courted her she fought 
him. Her extravagance in the shops alarmed him, but when 
he quarreled with her on that score, and demanded that she 
cease to smirch his credit with debts upon the merchants’ 
books, she would run away from home and stay until he 
sought her out in Park Place, where she was wheedling her 
father into ruinous indulgence. 


44 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


The old man's business was prospering and his gifts 
to Patty were hardly so much generosities as gestures of 
magnificence. 

Harry Chalender was constantly seen with old Jessamine. 
They talked the Croton project, but RoBards felt this to 
be only a tinsel pretext of Chalender’s to keep close to 
Patty. 

By the gods, he even infected her with his talk of water¬ 
power! Everybody was talking it now. It had become 
politics. 

For sixty years or so the town had dilly-dallied over a 
water supply—ever since the Irishman Christopher Colles 
had persuaded the British governor Tryon to his system of 
wells and reservoirs. Every year a bill was put forward, and 
the Wars of the Roses were mimicked in the Wars of the 
Rivers. 

Bronx fought Croton incessantly but neither gained a 
victory. Wily old Aaron Burr stole a march on both with 
his Manhattan Company and sneaking a bank in under the 
charter of a waterworks sank a well and purveyed liquid 
putridity at a high price. 

It was a great relief to RoBards when the Crotonians 
gained the upper hand in 1833, f° r it left his Bronx to purl 
along in leafy solitudes undammed. But it took two years 
to bring the project to a vote and then the majority was 
only seventeen thousand Ayes to six thousand Nos. 

Just after the sky-rockets of the Fourth of July died 
down, the engineers went out into Westchester to plant 
their stakes, outlining the new lake that the dam would 
form, and the pathway of the aqueduct from the Croton to 
the Harlem. 

This row of posts billowing up hill and down alongside 
the Hudson stretched like a vast serpent across the homes 
and farms and the sacred graveyards of villages and towns 
and old families. It was the signal for a new war. 

The owners of the land fell into two classes: those who 
would not let the water pass through their demesnes at any 


WITHIN THESE W.ALLS 45 

price, and those who sought to rob the city by unwarranted 
demands. 

The farmers seemed to RoBards to comport themselves 
with dignity and love of their own soil, though Chalender 
denounced them for outrageous selfishness in preferring the 
integrity of their estates to the health of a vast metropolis. 

But RoBards saw through Chalender’s lofty patriotism. 
Chalender could not unload his own land upon the city 
unless the whole scheme were established, and Chalender’s 
price was scandalously high. 

The stakes were not yet nearly aligned when an almost 
unequaled frost turned the buxom hills to granite overnight. 
It seemed that the havoc which this high emprise was to fore¬ 
stall had been purposely held in leash by the ironic fiends 
until the procrastinating city had drawn this parallel of 
stakes, this cartoon of an aqueduct. For almost immedi¬ 
ately the cataclysm broke. 

The idleness enforced upon the engineers by the evil 
weather drove most of them back to town, Harry Chalender 
among them. And now he dragged Patty into that vortex 
of dissipation for which the city was notorious. Dancing, 
drinking, theatre-going, riotous sleigh-rides, immodest cos¬ 
tumes, and dinners of wild revel gave the moralists reason 
to prophesy that God would send upon the wicked capital 
fire from the skies—as indeed He did in terrible measure. 

Harry Chalender began to follow Patty about and to en¬ 
counter her with a regularity that ceased to resemble coinci¬ 
dence. There was gossip. One of the slimy scandal-monger- 
ing newspapers well-named The Hawk and Buzzard printed 
a blind paragraph in which RoBards recognized his own 
case. 

But what could RoBards do? To horsewhip the editor or 
shoot the lover would not only feed the newspapers but 
blacken the lives of the babies, who were suffering enough 
now in the lack of a mother’s devotion without being cursed 
for life with a mother of no reputation. In a world gov¬ 
erned by newspapers the old rules of conduct were altered. 

The winter of 1835 fell bitterer than any ever known 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


46 

before. The cold was an excruciation. The sleighs rang 
along the street as if the snow were white steel. The pumps 
froze;-the cisterns froze; the pipes of the water companies 
froze underground, and the fire-hydrants froze at the curbs. 

The main industry of the town seemed to be the building 
and coaxing of fires, though coal and wood were almost 
impossible to obtain, and the price rose to such heights that 
one must either go bankrupt or freeze. 

Everybody began to wonder what would happen if a 
house should blaze up. The whole city would go. Who 
would come to the rescue of a burning house in such weather ? 
And with what water would the flames be fought? Every¬ 
body listened for the new firebell that had been hung in the 
City Hall cupola and had sent its brazen yelps across the 
sky so often, but was ominously silent of late as if saving 
its horrific throat for some Doomsday clangor. 

Hitherto, membership in certain of the fire companies had 
been cherished as a proof of social triumph. There were 
plebeian gangs made up of mechanics and laborers, and the 
Bowery b’hoys were a byword of uncouth deviltry. 

But RoBards had been accepted into one of the most 
select fire clubs with a silver plated engine. He kept his 
boots, trumpet, and helmet in a basket under his bed, so 
that there was never any delay in his response to the bell. 
He was so often the first to arrive that they gave him the 
key, and in the longest run he always carried more than his 
share of the weight in the footrace. But now he wished that 
he had never joined the company. 

Christmas drew near and Patty wore herself out in the 
shops and spent her time at home in the manufacture of 
gifts with her own hands. They were very apt hands at 
anything pretty and useless. She was going to have a Christ¬ 
mas tree, too, a recent affectation borrowed from the Hes¬ 
sian soldiers who had remained in the country after the 
Revolution. 

The evening of the sixteenth of December was unbear¬ 
ably chill. The fire itself seemed to be freezing red. The 
thermometer outside the house dropped down to ten below 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


47 

zero. The servants refused to go to the corner for water 
and Patty was frightened into staying home from a ball 
she was invited to. 

That was the ultimate proof of terror. It was one of the 
times when the outer world was so cruel that just to sit 
within doors by a warm fire was a festival of luxury; just 
to have a fire to sit by was wealth enough. 

Patty was so nearly congealed that she climbed into her 
husband’s lap and gathered his arms about her like the ends 
of a shawl. It had been a long while since she had paid his 
bosom such a visit and he was grateful for the cold. 

And then the great bell spoke in the City Hall tower— 
spoke one huge resounding awful word, “Fire!” before it 
broke into a baying as of infernal hounds. 

When RoBards started to evict Patty from his lap she 
gasped: “You’re not going out on such a night?” RoBards 
groaned: “I’ve got to!” He set her aside and ran upstairs 
for the basket of armor, and Patty followed him wailing 
with pity. 

“Don’t go, darling!” she pleaded. “You can tell them 
to-morrow that you were sick. You’ll die if you go out in 
this hideous cold, and then what will become of me? Of 
us? Of our babies?” 

Her solicitude heartened him. He was important to her 
after all! His death would grieve her. That added a 
beauty to duty. But it took away none of its authority. 

While he struggled into his boots, she ran to a window 
looking south and drew back the curtains. Through the 
thick lace of frost on the panes a crimson radiance pierced, 
imbuing the air with a rosy mist as if the town were seen 
through an upheld glass of Madeira. 

“It looks like the end of the world!” Patty screamed. 
“What will become of our beautiful city now? It will be 
nothing but ashes to-morrow. Don’t go! You’ll be buried 
under a wall, or frozen to death in the streets. If you’ll 
promise not to go down into that furnace, I’ll go with you 
to-morrow to Tuliptree Farm, and never leave it again!” 

His heart ached for her in her agitation, and it was 


48 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

not easy to tear off the clinging hands for whose touch he 
had so often prayed. But he broke free and dashed, 
helmeted and shod, into the icy world between him and the 
advancing hell. The fire’s ancient enemy, water, was not 
at hand for the battle, and the whole city lay helpless. 

At the firehouse door RoBards met Harry Chalender. He 
was dressed for the ball that Patty had planned to attend, 
and he wore white gloves and dancing pumps. 


CHAPTER VI 


I T was like Harry Chalender to wear dancing pumps to a 
fire on a midwinter night. 

“Harry will have 'em on on Judgment Day,” said one 
of the other members of the fire company, and they laughed 
at him through chattering teeth. 

This did not amuse RoBards. He wanted to hate Chalen¬ 
der; but justice was his foible, and he had to confess to his 
own prejudice that, while it was Chalenderish to appear in 
pumps at a fire, it was equally like him to be absent from no 
heroic occasion no matter what his garb. 

Harry played the fool, perhaps, but he was always at 
King Lear’s side. And though he never forgot his bauble, 
it tinkled and grinned wherever there was drama. 

And there promised to be drama enough this night. 

The gathering volunteers flung back the folding doors and 
disclosed the engine, a monster asleep and gleaming as with 
phosphorescent scales in the light of the brass and silver 
trimmings polished often and piously. A light was struck 
with a tinder-box and the signal lantern and torches bright¬ 
ened the room. 

The Fire King Engine Company had been proud of its 
tamed leviathan, though there had been some criticism be¬ 
cause on one side of the engine an allegorical figure of Hope 
had been painted with almost no clothes on her. But New 
York was advancing artistically with giant strides, and a 
painting of a semi-nude Adam and Eve had been exhibited 
that summer without provoking anything more violent than 
protest. Also, the Greek casts were displayed nowadays 
without interference, though of course ladies did not visit 
them at the same time with gentlemen. 

But Heaven rebuked the ruthless allegory of Hope before 
49 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


50 

this night was over; and with the ruination of Hope went 
the beautiful scene on the opposite flank of the engine, a 
painting of the recent burning of the Roman Catholic 
Church in Nassau Street. The Fire Kings had played a 
noble part there, and had almost saved the church. 

Now, as they dashed into the street they were thrown 
into a tangle to avoid the rush of the Naiad Hose Company 
swooping past with a gaudy carriage, whose front panel 
presented the burning of Troy and the death of Achilles, 
while the back panel showed an Indian maid parting from 
her lover. The hosemen might have been Indians them¬ 
selves from the wild yell they gave. 

There was no time for the usual gay dispute over the 
right of way, and the cobblestones and brickbats with which 
the road would have been normally challenged were frozen 
in the ice. Besides, the Fire Kings were sparse in numbers. 

Such Fire Kings as braved the elements would long tell 
of the catastrophe. Getting to the neighborhood of the 
blaze was adventure enough of itself. For the road was 
grooved with the tracks of sleigh runners and chopped up 
with a confusion of hoof-marks impressed in knife-edged 
ridges. The men inside the square of the draw-rope alter¬ 
nately slipped, sliddered, fell, rose, stumbled, sprawled, and 
ran on with wrenched joints and torn pantaloons. Their 
progress made a sharp music as if they were trampling 
through a river of crackling glass. 

But they ran on because there was tonic in the community 
of misery. 

RoBards was touched by the sight of Chalender’s lean 
face above the satin stock and the frilled white shirt. The 
others were in red flannel, and cold enough. Chalender’s 
great beaver hat was a further trial to keep on, and finally 
the wind swirled it out of sight and seeking. RoBards bared 
his own head and offered Chalender his brass-bound helmet 
of glazed leather, but Chalender declined it with a graceful 
gesture and a chill smile drawn painfully along the line of 
his white mouth. The only color in his cheeks was imposed 
by the ruddy flare of the sky. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


5i 

The fire, wherever it was, seemed to retreat as the com¬ 
pany advanced. It grew in vastitude, too. The scarlet 
heavens were tormented with yellow writhings, as if Niagara 
were falling upwards in a mist of smoke and a spume of red 
spray. 

Chalender’s patent leather pumps were soon cut through 
and his nimble feet left bloody traces on the snow. This 
offended RoBards somehow. Footprints on the snow were 
the sacred glory of the patriot troops at Valley Forge. What 
right had a fop like Chalender to such martyrdom ? 

When the puffing Fire Kings covered the long half-mile 
to City Hall Park, the fire was just as far away as ever. 

From here on the way was clogged with engines and 
hose carts plunging south and fighting through a tide of 
flight to the north. RoBards was reminded of the retreat 
from the cholera, until a wrangle for priority with a rival 
company engaged his thoughts, his fists, and his voice. 

Wagons of every sort toppling over with goods of every 
sort locked wheels while their drivers fought duels with 
whips and curses. Merchants who had gone early to bed 
were scampering half-clad to open their shops and rescue 
what they might. Everywhere they haggled frantically for 
the hire or the purchase of carts. Two hundred dollars was 
offered in vain for an hour’s use of a dray that would not 
have brought so much outright that afternoon, with its team 
thrown in. 

The commercial heart of the city was spurting flames, 
and the shop in Merchant Street where the volcano first 
erupted had spread its lava in circles. Everything was burn¬ 
ing but the frozen river, and ice-imprisoned shipping was 
ablaze at the docks. Whole warehouses were emptied and 
their stores carried to apparent safety as far as Wall Street, 
where they were heaped up in the shadow of the cupola of 
the new Merchants’ Exchange. 

Certain shopkeepers of pious mind shifted their wealth 
into the Dutch Reformed Church for safety. In the deeps 
of its gloom some invisible musician was playing on the 
big pipe-organ. The merchants lugging in their burdens 


52 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


felt that he interceded for them harmoniously against the 
din of the fiends whose fires danced on the windows, as 
if they reveled in the sacrilege of attacking the temples of 
both Mammon and Jehovah. First the fiends made a joke 
of the costly pretence that the Merchants’ Exchange was 
fireproof. Then they leaped across a graveyard to seize the 
church and sent Maypole ribbons twirling around and 
around its high spire. In half an hour the steeple buckled 
and plunged through its own roof, and the roof followed it, 
covering organ, pulpit, pews, and merchandise. 

Pearl Street, whose luxurious shops had made lower 
Broadway a second-rate bazaar, was sinking into rubble. 
Copper roofs were melting and red icicles dripped ingots 
on the street. 

The Fire Kings pushed on, with ardor dwindling as the 
magnificence of their task was revealed to them. They were 
scant of breath and footsore and cold, and their helmets 
rattled with flying embers. Embers were streaming across 
the river to Brooklyn and the people there sat on their 
roofs and wondered if their town must follow New York 
to destruction. On all the roofs in New York, too, shadowy 
bevies fought off the embers and flung them into the street. 

The fire companies were driven back in all directions. 
They felt as tiny and futile as apes fumbling and chittering 
against a forest blaze. 

By and by the bells ceased to ring. The tollers were too 
cold to pull the ropes—and what was the use of going 
on alarming those who were already in a panic? Yet the 
silence had an awe of doom in it. 

Merchants and their women cursed and wept, and tears 
smeared smoky faces. It was maddening to be so useless; 
firemen sobbed blasphemies as soldiers did when wet powder 
rendered them ridiculous and mocked their heroism. Their 
nostrils smarted with the acrid stench from bubbling paint 
and varnish, from mountains of chewing tobacco, cigars, and 
snuff, from thousands of shoes and boots and hats and 
household furnishings. Miles of silk and wool and cotton, 
woven and prettily designed, were all rags now that 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


53 

smoldered, or flew on the wind like singed birds, awkward 
ravens frightened out of some old rookery. 

Stage coaches and busses were caught in the lanes and 
consumed. The shops of the jewelers crumpled and broke 
inwardly as well as the hovels of the carpenters. Diamonds 
and rubies, emeralds, chains of fine gold, and cunning de¬ 
vices in frosted silver were fused and jumbled among black 
piles of rubbish. 

Numberless casks of liquor blew up and shot curiously 
tinged sheets of fire through the wallowing flames. Thieves 
rifled liquor stores, and drunken wastrels, hilarious or* 
truculent, reeled about as if an insane asylum had opened 
its gates. These wretches had to be saved from themselves, 
and they added a new terror to the reign of terror. Every 
distress and mockery imaginable seemed to combine to make 
the night maudlin, an infamous burlesque. 

As a part of the night’s irony the firemen were blistered 
by both fire and frost. While cold gales bit their necks 
and backs, and the wet streets congealed their feet to mere 
hobbles, the blast from the flames blistered their cheeks. 

Everywhere the pavements squirmed with black snakes 
of hose, limp and empty; for the hydrants were frozen, 
the cisterns sucked dry. In the face of such fire, little new 
fires had to be started around the hydrants to thaw them 
out, but when the water came it turned to ice in the hose 
as the chilled engines refused to work. 

It was madness to stand and wait in imbecile palsy while 
the holocaust flourished. 

“Water! water! in God’s name where can we get water!” 
the men shrieked at one another. 

Finally Harry Chalender seized a trumpet and bawled 
through it: 

“To the wharf!” 

The Fire Kings and the Naiad Hose Company ran to 
their places and hurried down the nearest street to the 
nearest dock. The hose flopped on ice, for the ice above 
had dammed the current and the water was not only low but 
frozen. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


54 

RoBards seized an axe and clambered down a slimy pile 
toward the surface. He smote at the ice and split it. Black 
water leapt at him and he felt hands clutching his ankles 
to drag him under. 

It was ungodly lonely down there in the dark and he 
was afraid to stay. But when he would climb up again, 
the slippery log refused its aid. Clinging to the cold ooze 
about the pile and watching the river smack its lips and 
wait, he felt death hideously near. He yelled for help again 
and again. At last a bare head was thrust out above, a 
hand was reached down to him. He knew by its soiled 
white glove that it was Chalender’s hand, but he seized it 
and was drawn up from the solitude of the muttering waters 
to the glare of the upper world. The cinders rained upon 
his white face now as if they were shoveled at him. 

He ran to join the men at the engine, gripping the long 
pump handles and working them up and down. It was 
good to be at work at something. 

“Jump her, boys, jump her!” they cried, and heaved and 
grunted, hoisted and squatted in alternate effort. 

But only a little water came. It hardly swelled the hose. 
The engine choked. Before it was put in order the hose 
was stopped with a mush of freezing water. They built a 
fire from the too abundant fuel, and stretched the hose over 
it like a long snake being warmed. 

As the taskless volunteers waited, twiddling their wintry 
thumbs and stupidly regarding the dark building before 
them, the fire subtly arrived in its eaves. Along the cornice 
it ran like an autumnal vine of poison ivy reddening on a 
wall. Soon the roof was a miter of white flame. The 
whole warehouse was a huge fireworks, a set piece like “the 
Temple of the Union” that the city displayed at Vauxhall 
Gardens every Fourth of July. It lacked only the 1776 in 
silver lace-work and the stars of the twenty-six states. 

Just as the set-piece frames would crack, this building 
became wreckage. The top floor ripped free and took the 
next one with it to crush a lower. Then with a drunken 
belch of crimson, the roof went up and back and spewed 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


55 

flame in a giant’s vomit upon a store that had been called 
fireproof. Its somber dignity was now a rabid carmagnole . 
Stone and brick and steel grew as soft as osiers, bending 
and twisting. Inside there were thuds of detonating barrels 
of spirits. The stout walls billowed, broke outwards, spill¬ 
ing themselves across the street. 

The Fire Kings fled with cries of terror, many of them 
battered to their knees with missiles. 

When they turned to look back from safety, their engine 
was buried in the flaming barricade that had been a street. 

Now the Fire Kings were idle indeed. ' As they loafed 
despondent, they saw boats coming slowly across the river 
among the floes of ice. Newark was sending firemen to the 
rescue. But what could they do? There was no water. 

The alarm was on its way to Philadelphia. The hills of 
Germantown, indeed, flickered with the illumination a hun¬ 
dred miles away, while swift riders and men in sleighs were 
carrying the news of the end of New York to its old rival. 
Before sunset of the next day four hundred Quakers would 
be setting out with their engines across the white roads. 
When they arrived on the second day they would find the 
fire still ravening and the fighters overwhelmed with fatigue 
and hopelessness. 

Forty-five miles away on a steamboat from Albany return¬ 
ing New Yorkers hung over the rail and wondered if Judg¬ 
ment Day had indeed been sounded for the metropolis of 
the new world. 

Deeply as he had abhorred the town, RoBards felt his 
heart ache for it now. Pity turned to love, and it seemed 
abominable that the work and the treasure and the destinies 
of so many poor people should be annulled in this pure 
wantonness of destruction. 

Odd, that a man should love or hate a city or a nation, 
or feel sorry for a jumble of buildings or a stretch of land, 
a shore, or a hill. But RoBards knew a sudden tenderness 
for New York. His heart suffered a revulsion like that of 
the English soldiers, who wept for Joan of Arc when she 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


56 

turned beautiful and pitiful as she blistered and browned 
in the faggots they had heaped and lighted about her. 

A little after midnight Harry Chalender at his elbow 
shouted aloud his meditations: 

“Only one thing can save this poor town—gunpowder! 
The Brooklyn Navy Yard! There’s plenty of powder 
there!” 


CHAPTER VII 


ROB ARDS and Chalender ran as long as they could; then 
walked a while till the agony in their lungs eased a little; then 
ran again. At last they reached the East River. 

Moored at the slip were many rowboats, lying far below 
and rocking in the tide that bumped them against the high 
piles and scraped them with sharp blocks of ice floating 
out into the bay. 

The two men lowered themselves over the edge and 
dropped through the dark into the nearest boat, and almost 
into the river. 

It was ticklish business when they worked their way out 
into the current; and the oars were of more frequent use 
for prodding off the onslaughts of ice than for progress. 

The river seemed as wide here as a Red Sea of blood, 
for the conflagration streaked every wave with rubric. 
From one wharf a cargo of turpentine had run flaming and 
a little Sargasso Sea, a blazing island of floating fire, sailed 
down the bay, singeing the wharf posts and leaving them 
charred and tottering. Fleeing from this pursuing island, 
sailboats sped seaward in the icy gale like gray owls. 

The lower end of Manhattan Island was all alive with 
fire under a hovering sky of smoke. RoBards and Chalen¬ 
der craned their necks now and then to correct their course 
toward the masts of the live-oak war frigates, standing like 
a burned forest against the sky. 

At last their skiff jarred the float at the landing place. 
Sailors and marines caught their hands and made fast the 
painter and asked foolish questions whose answers they 
knew well enough. 

Chalender demanded an audience with the officer in com¬ 
mand, and his voice sent men darting to the powder house. 

57 


58 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

Boats were loaded with kegs and manned and pushed out 
into the river. 

It was not so lonely returning. But far overhead the 
river that had never been bridged, was bridged now by a 
long arch of driven embers, a stream like a curved aerial 
river, an infernal rainbow promising destruction, linking 
Brooklyn to New York as Gomorrah was joined with Sodom 
in a deluge of brimstone. 

When at length the powder bringers reached the docks 
again, carrying ruin to fight ruin with, they hastened to the 
nearest point in the widening scarlet circle and selected a 
building once removed from the blazing frontier. 

The owner, Mr. Tabelee, and a few laborers were load¬ 
ing his wares into a wagon which he had just bought from 
the driver. 

When the marines and civilians came to him and said 
that they were about to blow up his building, Mr. Tabelee 
ordered them about their business. 

Chalender answered: 

"Our business is the salvation of our city from complete 
destruction. You ought to be glad to sacrifice your store.” 

"Sacrifice hell!” Tabelee roared. 

An alderman and two city watchmen came up. They 
lent their authority to Chalender, and restrained the protest¬ 
ing Tabelee while the marines entered the building. It was 
lighted with the newfangled system of gas, a dangerous and 
doubtless short-lived fashion. 

Down to the cellar went Chalender, RoBards, and a group 
of powder bearers with two kegs. They set down one keg 
and thrust an upright plank between the head of it and the 
ceiling of the cellar, so that the cellar explosion should be 
transmitted to the floor above. 

There were baskets of champagne in. this cellar. Marines 
stripped the bottles of their straw jackets, piled them up and 
made a fuse by sprinkling powder on a tape they laid along 
the floor and up the stairs out into the street. 

When the train was ready a spark was snapped at the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


59 

outer end of the fuse, and the spectators ran in one direction 
while the fire ran like a sparkling mouse in the other. 

Boom! The building split and caved in and a cheer went 
up at the triumph over the fire. But the fire had the last 
laugh for the splintered timbers made a lively kindling and 
the building which was supposed to act as a barrier simply 
added itself as fuel. This was one of those iron jokes the 
gods alone can laugh at. 

Chalender was not stubborn and dogged. He was elastic. 
Anybody could bend or turn him aside, but he always came 
again with the backlash of a steel rod or a whip. 

The failure in Tabelee’s case only confirmed his de¬ 
termination. 

He and his crew proceeded to level a street of buildings 
one by one. As if a vast invisible plough overturned them 
along its furrow, they rolled over and lay black. 

RoBards seeing how the trick was done was eager to carry 
on the good work. Chalender assigned to him a number of 
powder kegs and a wagon to carry them, and despatched 
him ahead. 

There was a kind of intoxication in this destruction. The 
fever was catching. RoBards had a high motive, but he 
became in spirit once more a boy on Hallowe’en. He had in 
his late youth joined the Callithumpian Band that made New 
Year’s Eve a carnival of mischief. He had taken a sign, 
“Coffin Warehouse,” and hung it on a doctor’s front gate. 
On the Fourth of July he had fired a flintlock from his 
father’s front stoop and blown the powdered scratch wig 
from the head of an old-fashioned neighbor sitting in his 
window. He had set off spitfire crackers and squibs under 
the bellies of sleepy horses. 

And now he was exultant in a private Evacuation Day 
festivity, kicking over buildings like a naughty young Pan- 
tagruel. A kind of grim laughter filled his soul as he heard 
the thud of some vast structure, built up by masons painfully 
month by month, and knocked down by him in one noisy 
moment. 

He so lost sight of his progress that he did not pause to 


6 o 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


see whose shops he wrecked. In one warehouse filled with 
Chinese importations he made his fuse of a bolt of silk 
strangely exquisite to his numbed fingers; he had long since 
discarded his soppy gloves. 

As he unreeled the bolt and stretched a royal path for the 
fire, the silk seemed to whisper in his fingers, bewailing its 
use for such a purpose. He wondered what the Celestial 
who spun it after the American pattern had planned it for— 
a lady’s dress, no doubt. Running back to the cellar he filled 
a cornucopia of Chinese paper with powder and returned 
along his path, sifting the black grains over the sulphur- 
hued fabric. 

As he proceeded sidewise, crab-fashion, up the stairs his 
shoulder struck somebody’s thighs. He saw beneath his 
gaze a pair of black slippers, little ones in India rubbers. 
His eyes rose with him, and widened to find at the top of 
the dress, a face of beauty in such wrath that he could 
hardly recognize it as his wife’s. 

“Patty!” he gasped, “what are you doing here, in the 
name of-” 

“What in the same name are you doing here?” she broke 
in, her voice a-croak with unwomanly ire. 

“Trying to save the city.” 

“What do you care about the city?” she sneered, so harsh 
a look in her eyes that he lost patience and commanded: 

“Get out of the way at once! I’m going to blow up this 
building.” 

She forgot her obedience and shamed him before 
strangers by retorting: 

“I’ll fiot budge! I’ve a better right than you in my 
father’s warehouse.” 

“Your father’s? Good God!” 

He looked past her and saw old Jessamine’s face, purple 
with rage and the long use of Madeira and the habit of 
domination. He was ordering the marine officer off his 
premises, and the marine officer turned to one of the city 
officials who was with him. The official nodded and the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 61 

officer beckoned one of his soldiers and, pointing to Mr. 
Jessamine, spoke: 

“Throw that dunderhead out of here before I tumble the 
building on him.” 

And in a holiday spirit the soldiers ran the old gentle¬ 
man to the curb. 

He almost expired at the sacrilege to his person. Patty 
whirled, seized her husband as with claws, and screamed: 

“Stop them! stop them!” 

The first was a bloodcurdling shriek that knifed the air. 
The second was the cry of a rabbit dragged from its warren 
by a terrier. Her anger made her faint. Her hands relaxed 
their clutch, her taut body grew limp and slid down through 
RoBards’ arms. She was a heap of cloth under a*hat at 
his feet. 

He bent and gathered her up with vast difficulty. He 
was worn out with his toil and she gave him no help. The 
marine officer had to aid him. They stood her on her feet 
and RoBards thrust one arm under her knees and another 
about her waist. When he rose, her hat fell back, dangling 
by the ribbons from her throat. Her face hung down 
white and lifeless as-a broken doll’s. 

He staggered under the weight of her against his weary 
lungs and staggered yet more under the burden of the 
sweetness of her round body and her delicate limbs. It was 
hard to endure that so darling a thing should have looked 
at him with such hate. 

He was about to lay her upon one of the counters and 
revive her from her swoon, when he saw that the marine 
officer was knocking a flint in the tinder-box and kneeling to 
set the burning rag to the powdered silk. 

Out of the dark shop RoBards hustled with Patty. Her 
feet caught across the door and he had to fall back and sidle 
through with her. In the street the world was red again and 
he fled stumblingly across the rough cobbles and up the 
next alley. 

The ground quaked and reeled under him and he heard a 
roar as of one of the Miltonic cannons the angels fougffi 


62 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


with in heaven. He glanced over his shoulder and, through 
the ravine of the alley, saw the Jessamine warehouse rise, 
turn to a quivering black jelly, and splash back in a heap, 
releasing to the view a larger crimson sky. 

When the reverberations had dulled, the air throbbed with 
a hoarse weeping. Against the wall an ancient man leaned 
his head in the crook of his elbow, and cried like a birched 
schoolboy. It was old Jessamine. 

‘‘Two hundred thousand dollars gone!” he was moaning. 
“And the insurance worthless.” 

Patty came back to life with a sigh and lifting her head 
as from a pillow, peered up into RoBards’ face sleepily. 
When she realized who held her, she kicked and struggled, 
muttering: 

“Let me down, you fiend! Let me down, I say!” 

He set her on her feet and steadied her while she wav¬ 
ered. She recognized her father’s voice and ran to him, 
crying: 

“Papa! poor papa!” 

They whispered together for a moment, then he heard the 
old man groan: 

“We are beggars now! beggars!” 

RoBards moved to them with hands outstretched in sym¬ 
pathy, but when they saw him they stared and shrank from 
him. 

The old man cowered over his gold-headed cane, and 
Patty set her arm under his to help him as they tottered 
along the wall, the father’s white head wagging, the daugh¬ 
ter’s form bent as if with age. They looked to be beggars 
indeed—and in a city where the rich were especially smitten. 


CHAPTER VIII 


The cart with the powder kegs moved on, but RoBards 
did not follow. The holiday of overturning buildings had 
ceased to suggest either a sacred duty or a pastime. He 
drifted irresolute about the town. 

He went home at last, cold, cold, cold. The distance was 
thrice as long as when he ran with the Fire Kings. St. 
John’s Park was like a graveyard when he reached it. 
Though it was far from the hour of winter sunrise, the bare 
trees were thrilled with daybreak ardor; the houses were 
pink with tremulous - auroral rose. But no birds sang or 
flew, and the dawn in the sky was the light of devastation. 

He hoped for and dreaded the meeting with his wife. He 
had been preparing his defence all the way home. He was 
a good lawyer and he had a good case, but women were not 
like the judges he found on the bench before him. Women 
had their own statutes and procedures, and appeals were 
granted on the most peculiar grounds. 

But his wife was not at home. She had stopped at her 
father’s, of course, for a while. The black folk about the 
house were asleep while the white man’s town went up in 
smoke. It was none of their affair. 

He flung down his crushing helmet, drew off his sodden 
boots, and put his benumbed toes against the warming stove. 

He meant to keep awake till Patty came back. But he 
nodded stupidly. When, as it seemed, he flung up his head 
for the last long nod, his eyes found broad daylight. The 
stove was cold, and he was chilled again. 

He heard the sounds of breakfast-getting on the floor 
below. Some one was shoveling up coal from the bin in the 
hall closet. 

He glanced at his own clothes. His hands were grimed. 

63 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


64 

His red flannel shirt was foul. He fell back from the mirror 
at the sight of his reflection. He looked a negro, with only 
his eyeballs white. 

Aching with fatigue, he stripped to the skin and put on 
clean underclothes. He cracked the water in the pitcher and 
filled the bowl with lumps of ice. When he had* soused his 
face and hands, the bowl was full of ink and his face was 
not half clean. 

He went to the door and, with jaws dripping darkly, 
howled to his black man, Cuff, for water. 

The answer came up the stairs: 

“Cistern done froze. Pump at de corner don’t pump. 
Man who sells de bottles of water ain’t come round—he 
bottles all pop, most like. I’ll fotch you what we got in de 
kittle.” 

The hot water helped, but he blackened three towels be¬ 
fore he could see his own skin. 

He put on a fresh shirt and stock and his best suit—for 
Patty’s sake—and went down to breakfast. 

It was the usual banquet of meat, potatoes, eggs, fruit, 
vegetables, hot breads, preserves, sauces, and coffee. The 
coffee bettered his inner being so much that he assumed the 
outer world improved. He found courage to look at the 
morning paper. RoBards was one of the seventeen hundred 
New Yorkers who subscribed to a paper. 

He took the Courier and Enquirer, edited by General 
Webb, who had proved himself a soldier, indeed, a year ago 
when the mob attacked his building and he drove it off. 
That was the first time the mayor was ever elected by a 
popular vote, and the riots gave little encouragement to the 
believers in general male suffrage. 

During the fire the Courier reporters had been scurrying 
about gathering up information, and RoBards read with awe 
the list of streets destroyed and the summing-up: 

“Six hundred and seventy-four tenements, by far the 
greater part in the occupancy of our largest shipping and 
wholesale drygoods merchants, and filled with the richest 
produce of every portion of the globe. How estimate the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 65 

immense loss sustained, or the fearful consequences to the 
general prosperity?” 

The paper dropped from RoBards’ hands. If that had 
been the state of affairs at the hour when the paper’s forms 
were closed, where could the fire be now ? 

He rose to go to the roof and see if herald embers were 
not already alighting there. But the knocker clattered on 
the front door, and his heart leaped at the sound of Patty’s 
voice. 

He ran to meet her and take her pauper family under his 
roof, while it lasted. But she was alone. She was explain¬ 
ing to her astonished maid, Teen, that she had come home 
for clean clothes. She needed them evidently, for her pretty 
gown was streaked and blackened. 

She greeted her husband with a look as icy as the air she 
brought in with her from the street: 

“I see you haven’t blown up your own house yet, Mist’ 
RoBards. May I take some of the things my poor father 
bought me before you ruined him?” 

“Patty!” he groaned. It was some time before he dared 
go up the stairs she had scaled at a run. He went as re¬ 
luctantly into her room as he had gone to the principal’s 
desk at the academy to be whipped for some mischief. 

His wife squeaked with alarm at his entrance. She had 
tossed her hat on the bed and her gown with it. She had 
taken off her stays and was still gasping with the relief. 
RoBards had vainly protested against her habit of spending 
half an hour drawing her corset strings so tight that she 
could hardly breathe, for the ridiculous purpose of distorting 
her perfect form, to make her bust high and her chest 
narrow. 

She stood before him in a chemise and petticoat, looking 
very narrow without her great skirts, and startlingly the 
biped in her ribboned garters and white silk stockings. 

“Get out, will you!” she stormed, “and let me change my 
clothes.” 

Instead he put out the hostile Teen, and closing the door, 
locked it. 


66 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


“Now, Patty, you’re going to talk to me. Has the fire 
reached your father’s home yet?” 

A sniff was his only answer. It was enough. 

“Then you’re not going back to it. You stay here.” 
He spoke with autocracy, but his hands pleaded as he 
said: “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that-” 

“You can’t tell me anything. And if you lay your grimy 
hands on me, I’ll scratch your eyes out.” 

He stood off and gazed at her, helpless as a mastiff 
looking down at a kitten with back arched and claws un¬ 
sheathed. He could have crunched her bones with ease, 
but she held him at bay by her very petty prettiness. 

He was so poor of spirit and resource that he stooped 
to say: 

“Since you’re so interested in Harry Chalender, you may 
be interested to know that the business of blowing up those 
buildings was his own idea.” 

He thought that this would either reinstate him in her 
respect or at least debase Harry Chalender there. But she 
dumbfounded him by her always unexpected viewpoint: 

“It was a splendid idea!” 

“Then why do you blame me for what I was going to 
do?” 

“Because you destroyed my father’s fortune wantonly— 
for spite—without any reason.” 

“It was to save the city. The building would have burned 
soon anyway.” 

“It would not have burned at all! It lies there now un¬ 
touched. The wind shifted and carried the fire away from 
it.” 

He dropped to a chair, bludgeoned like an ox, and as 
bovine in his enjoyment of this hellish witticism of fate. 

Patty always loved to spurn him when he was down 
and she triumphed now: 

“Besiks, if you must bring Harry Chalender into it, I 
know that even if Harry had blown up all the other build¬ 
ings in the world, he would have spared my father’s—es¬ 
pecially if I had asked him to.” 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


67 

RoBards nodded. That was probably true. But what 
was the uncanny genius of Chalender? He was a very 
politician among women as well as men. He allied him¬ 
self with great causes and carried them greatly through, 
yet always managed to see that he and his friends profited 
somehow. 

For years he and his clique had been storming the public 
ear for a city water supply, and had made prophecy of just 
such a calamity as this. And now he and his partisans 
could stand above the smoking pyre of the city and crow a 
gigantic, ‘‘I told you so !” 

As RoBards sat inert and lugubriously ridiculous, Patty 
regarded him with a studious eye. She dazed him by say¬ 
ing after a long hush: 

“Since you don’t want me to go back to my father’s 
house, I’ll stay here.” 

He would have risen and seized her to his breast with 
a groan of rapture if she had said this in the far-off ages 
before the last few minutes of their parley. But now he 
grew even more contemptible in his own mind. There was 
no note of pity or of love in her voice, and he was so 
wretched that he muttered: 

“Are you staying here because your father’s home is too 
gloomy to endure, or because you can’t give up the pleasure 
of gloating over my misery?” 

Incomprehensible woman! When he tried to insult her, 
she always parried or stepped aside and came home with a 
thrust of perfect confusion for him. 

And now that he had hurled at her the dirtiest missile 
of contempt within his reach, instead of crying out in rage, 
marching off in hurt pride, or throwing something at him, 
she laughed aloud and flung herself across his lap and 
hugged his neck with bare, warm arms till he choked. 

“You are the stupidest darling alive. But every now and 
then, when you get horribly superior or hideously>wncast 
you say the wisest things! Why is it that you understand 
me only when you are mad at me?” 

He put lonely, hunting hands about her lithe, stayless 


68 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


waist, and smothered his face among the white hawthorn 
buds in the snowy lane of her bosom. 

Men were still calling women “mysterious” because 
women’s interests were different from men’s. The males, 
like stupid hounds, found cats occult simply because they 
said “mew!” instead of “wow!” Patty completely puzzled 
her husband when she chuckled: 

“You are a beast, and an imbecile, and my father hates 
you and blames me for bringing you into our family, so 
I’ll have to be a mother to you.” 

He winced at being cherished as an idiot child, but any¬ 
thing was better than exile from that fragrant presence, and 
he clung to her with desperation. 


CHAPTER IX 


Now that love had bridged another of the abysses that 
kept opening in the solid ground of their union, they fell 
a prey to curiosity. They decided simultaneously to go visit 
the scene of the ruins. 

The streets were a-crawl with men, women, and children 
hurrying to the crater of the volcano. Many of the hast- 
eners were persons who had slept through the night and set 
out to open their shops at the usual hour, only to find them 
fuming heaps of refuse. People who dwelt as far out as 
Bleecker or Houston Street had been generally unaware 
of the disaster. 

Some of the late arrivals were still able to drag from 
their cellars, or from the jumbled streets in front of them, 
a certain portion of their stocks. A coffee merchant sal¬ 
vaged cartloads of well-roasted bean; a dealer in chewing 
tobacco shoveled up wagonloads of dried weed and sold it 
later; drygoods men rescued scorched bolts of calico and 
worsted to furnish forth bankrupt sales. Patty wailed aloud 
to see heaps of fine lace blackening on the ground and bolts 
of silk still blazing. One china shop was melted into 
ludicrous clusters, as of grapes from a devil’s vineyard. 
Zinc and copper roofs had formed cascades that were hard¬ 
ened as if a god had petrified a flood. 

From toppling ruins whence the floors were stripped, iron 
safes hung in their crannies, their warped doors having 
long since betrayed the guarded records and securities to 
destruction. Incessant salvos of thunder shook the air, as 
walls fell in mountain-slides and sent up new flurries of 
smoke and flame. 

Poking about wherever the ashes were cool enough, were 
beggars and thieves and harrowed owners. Little boys and 
girls and drunken hags from the slums paraded in lace and 

69 


70 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

silk. Cavalry and infantry and marines went here and there, 
trying to drive back the dishonest, and to distinguish be¬ 
tween the owners of the ruins and those who merely 
hoped to steal a profit from the disaster. 

Caravans of weary cart-horses staggered drunkenly out 
of the fallen city, dragging forth dripping wains of mer¬ 
chandise. Dog-tired firemen were returning to their engine- 
houses for rest, and RoBards felt that he was a shirker. 
Before long he restored Patty to her home and returned to 
duty, warmed by her farewell embrace and the dewy rose 
of a perfect kiss. 

For thirty-six hours the fire blazed on before the ex¬ 
hausted New York and Newark firemen and the four hun¬ 
dred Philadelphian reinforcements determined its final 
boundaries at the wall of exploded buildings. It had been 
confined at last to the business district and few important 
homes were touched. But forty-five crowded acres, the rich¬ 
est forty-five acres on this side of the ocean, had been 
reduced to rubbish. Seventeen million dollars had gone up 
in smoke and spark. All of the old Dutch realm that 
had survived the fires of ’76 and ’78 had been consumed 
forever. 

New York had no longer any visible antiquity. Hence¬ 
forth it was mere American. A fortnight later, when 
Christmas had passed, the black Brocken was still a sight 
that drew visitors from the countrysides about. People 
from Long Island forgot to hunt deer in the wilds there, 
and came over to stare at the little plumes of smoke that 
wavered above the jumbled prairie. For weeks there was 
an all-night sunset above Manhatto’s isle. 

After the gigantic debauch of fire came the long days 
of penalty-paying. The merchants turned to the insurance 
companies to reimburse their losses. The insurance com¬ 
panies were overwhelmed by the catastrophe. Not one of 
them could pay ten cents on the dollar. For a time it seemed 
that all of them must go into one general bankruptcy. But 
first they called upon their stockholders with disastrous 
assessments. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


7 i 

Three old-maid cousins of Patty’s were assessed five 
thousand dollars on account of their stocks, and came to 
her father’s house weeping to find themselves stripped to 
poverty. Being respectably bred women, they had no re¬ 
course but the charity of relatives. They could not work, 
of course. But old Jessamine met them with a face of ab¬ 
jection. He was a pauper likewise, and in his own destruc¬ 
tion he foresaw a general collapse. 

When RoBards, after his three days’ campaign with the 
Fire Kings, got home at length, he learned that Patty had 
returned to her father’s house. She left him a note, ex¬ 
plaining that her father was almost out of his mind. 

Hurrying to Park Place, RoBards found that old Jessa¬ 
mine was indeed maniac with the sudden change in his for¬ 
tunes. His very prudence had mocked him. He had been 
a man who combined rigid economy with daring experiment. 
He had pushed agents into China and chartered ships to 
bring home his wares. Caution had made him build his 
warehouse expensively of fireproof materials. He had been 
extravagant in nothing so much as in the equipment against 
flames and in the amount of insurance he carried. 

Yet fate had made a fool of him. Officials of the city 
had authorized officers of the navy to set off kegs of 
powder in his temple and scatter his wealth to the winds. 

And the flames had turned aside from the building in 
front of his! That had been surrendered to the fire, yet it 
stood now unharmed, mocking the obscene garbage of the 
Jessamine Company. 

And he could collect no fire insurance for his unburned 
ruins, despite the premiums he had squandered. He was 
too sick with disgust to attend the mass meeting of citizens 
called by the mayor, and stirred to courage by James Gore 
King. His name was left off the Dudley Selden commit¬ 
tee of one hundred and twenty-five important men. The 
city voted a loan of six million dollars to the insurance 
companies for cash payments, but he received never a cent. 
He could not even accept a dole from the moneys sub- 


72 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

scribed by sympathetic Boston, Philadelphia, and other 
towns. 

His very home was no longer his own; creditors who 
had been proud to honor his notes were now wolves at his 
door. 

In his frenzy he cast all the blame on RoBards, and 
roared that his own son-in-law had led the vandals into his 
warehouse. Such excuses as RoBards could improvise were 
but turpentine to his flaming wrath. 

When RoBards offered the old man the shelter of his 
home in St. John’s Park, Jessamine was a very Lear of 
white-haired ire. But he accepted the proffer of Tuliptree 
Farm, because it would take him far from the scene of his 
downfall; it would afford him a wintry asylum where he 
could gnaw on his own bitterness. 

Before he set forth into the snowy hills of Westchester, 
he made one stern demand upon RoBards: 

“You call yourself a lawyer. Well, prove it, sir, by 
suing this diabolic city for its wanton destruction of my 
property!” 

To appease him RoBards consented to undertake the case. 
He entered suit against the mayor and the aldermen in the 
Superior Court for two hundred thousand dollars. 


CHAPTER X 


Both fire and water conspired to embitter RoBards 
against New York, for both had laid personal hands upon 
his home and his career, invaded his very soul. 

The first mood of the stricken city was one of despair. 
Then anger mounted. Scapegoats were sought. Some laid 
the blame on the piped gas that had come into vogue ten 
years before. Samuel Leggett had been the first to light 
his house with the explosive and his guests had felt that 
they took their lives in their hands when they accepted his 
hospitality. He had been one of the leaders of the Bronx 
River party, too. 

Others complained that the fire had gone beyond con¬ 
trol because the unchecked insolence and greed of the 
builders had led them to pile up structures as high as five 
or six stories. So an ordinance was passed forbidding 
future Babel towers to rise above the fourth floor. 

The true cause of the fire was proclaimed from many pul¬ 
pits as a magnificent rebuke from heaven upon a city in 
which extravagance had gone mad and sin flourished ex¬ 
ceedingly. One text for a scathing sermon was: “Is there 
evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? 9 ’ Another 
preacher chose the fall of the tower of Siloam upon sinners 
as his parallel. 

But if God punished the new Nineveh, it paid him little 
heed, for a revel of crime ensued; burglaries were countless. 
Vice ruled and people danced and drank with desperate 
zeal. 

More amazing yet, a fever of prosperity followed. When 
lots in the burned district were offered at auction, the first 
of them brought prices above anybody’s dreams. A panic 
of enthusiasm made skyrockets of values. People who had 

73 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


74 

a little cash laid it down as a first payment on property 
far beyond their means, and then borrowed money to build 
with. New shops and tenements began to shoot up, and of 
a statelier sort than before. Brick and marble replaced 
wood, and the builders were so active that the editor of 
the Mirror was reminded of his classics and quoted the 
scene in Vergil where Tineas watched the masons and archi¬ 
tects of Tyre raising Carthage to glory. 

It was ominous, however, that most of these buildings 
were founded upon mortgages. There was frenzy, not 
sanity, in the land speculation. Wildcat banks were opened 
everywhere. Prices for all things soared till flour reached 
fifteen dollars a barrel and wheat two dollars a bushel. The 
poor grew restive. Everybody, grew restive. 

War broke out against the Catholics. In the Protestant 
pulpits they were assailed as worse than atheists. The mon¬ 
asteries and nunneries were described as dens of vice, and 
the populace was finally so aroused that a Protestant mob 
attacked Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and would have set it 
afire if it had not been turned into a fortress of armed men 
with rifles aimed through walls crenelated for defense. 
There was a riot also in a theatre. 

New York was all riot. Mobs gathered at every pre¬ 
text, and nothing would stop them but bullets or the threat 
of them. The only subject on which there was even partial 
agreement was water. The one insurance policy that could 
be trusted was offered by the Croton Company. The aque¬ 
duct would cost only four and a half millions. They said 
“only” now, for the fire had burned up seventeen millions 
in a night or two. 

In April the engineers went out upon the mellowing hills 
and began to pound stakes again, to re-survey and to 
wrangle with the landholders. 

The people of Tarry town and the other communities met 
to protest that the taking of their land was unconstitutional, 
but nothing could check the city’s ruthlessness. The Water 
Commissioners, unable to buy, were authorized to condemn 
and to take over at their own appraisement. But the land- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


75 

holders made a hard fight, and some of them brought their 
claims to RoBards’ office. They found in him a ready war¬ 
rior, for he understood the spirit that actuated them. 

Lawyer though he was, RoBards could never keep his own 
heart out of his cases. If he had been a surgeon he would 
have suffered every pang that his patients endured; he 
would have gone frantic with rage against the mysteries of 
anguish, the incomprehensible, immemorial torture-festival 
that life has been. He would either have howled blas¬ 
phemies at his God for his inhumanity, or he would have 
taken refuge in atheism from the horror of blaming a deity 
for infinite cruelties, the least of which, if inflicted by a 
man upon an animal, would have caused his fellowmen to 
destroy him as a hydrophobic wolf. 

The law was a like insanity to RoBards. Since it is a 
condition of human nature that almost every man sees a 
sacredness in his own rights and a wickedness in every 
claim that conflicts with his own happiness; and since such 
rights and wrongs crisscross inextricably and are inter- 
tangled in such a Gordian knot as only a sword can solve, 
it is inevitable that cheap or bitter humorists should con¬ 
tinue to find material for easy satire or fierce invective 
in the lawyers and judges who endeavor to reach peace 
by compromise. 

Lawyers can prosper only as doctors do, by stifling their 
passions and devoting their intellects to their professions as 
a kind of noble sport. But RoBards was not a sportsman. 

The suit of Jessamine vs. The City of New York should 
have been a cold matter of dollars and cents and justice, but 
nothing has ever been hotter or more passionate than money 
wars. When RoBards appeared before the Superior Court 
to secure damages against the city for the ruination of 
Jessamine’s property, the corporation counsel demurred to 
his Declaration against the Mayor et al on the ground that 
the Mayor and the aldermen had statutory authority. The 
demurrers were sustained. Of course, RoBards appealed 
to the Court of Errors, and of course it would take eleven 
years for his case to come up again. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


76 

This embittered him against the city as a personal enemy. 
Having accepted the Westchester standpoint as to the 
farmers’ rights, every motive and activity of everybody 
south of the Harlem River was an added tyranny. 

Chalender and his crowd might accuse the farmers of 
pettiness because they would not surrender their fields to 
the thirsty myriads of the city. But RoBards felt that this 
was only a new campaign in the eternal combat between 
town and country. He felt that if certain kinds of man¬ 
kind had their way, every stream would be chained to a 
wheel, every field would contain a tenement or a shop. A 
snuff factory and a linen bleachery had all too long dis¬ 
graced the lower stretches of the Bronx. 

New York was pushing its beautiful wheatfields further 
and further north. The old pond, called “The Collect” (and 
well pronounced “the colic”) had long since been drained to 
a swamp and replaced by the hideous crime-nest of The Five 
Points. The waters that ran through Canal Street were 
hidden gradually from the light of day as a covered sewer. 
Taverns and gin hells had taken root in the outlying re¬ 
gions above Madison Square, and the distant roads were 
noisy with horse races, brandy guzzling, and riotous con¬ 
versation. Even on the Sabbath the New Yorkers sent their 
wives to church and went out into the fields for unholy 
recreation. 

RoBards entered the lists as the champion of the rights 
of God’s free soil, New York was to him a vast octopus 
thrusting its grisly tentacles deep into the fairest realms 
to suck them dry and cover them with its own slime. If it 
were not checked, it would drive all the farmers from 
Manhattan Island. The real estate speculators talked of a 
day when the city would be all city up to the Harlem River, 
as if that time would be a millennium instead of a 
pandemonium. 

Seeing his ardor and hearing his eloquence, more and 
more of the Westchester patriots engaged RoBards as their 
attorney. His battle ground was the Chancery Court, where 
the fate of the lands was settled. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


77 

He lost every case. The city’s claim to water was ruled 
paramount to any American citizen’s rights to his own land. 
RoBards might cry that New York was repeating the very 
tyranny that had brought on the Revolution against England. 
He might protest that the Revolutionary heroes of West¬ 
chester had incarnadined their own hills with their blood 
in vain, if the greed of New Amsterdam were to wrest their 
homes from them after all. 

But the judges only smiled or yawned at his fervor. They 
would discuss nothing but the price to be paid for the con¬ 
demned property, and RoBards could do nothing but sell his 
clients’ lands dear and delay the final defeat as long as 
he could. 

He and his colleagues made New York sweat for its vic¬ 
tory. Already the original estimate of the cost of the aque¬ 
duct was nearly doubled and three and a half millions added 
to the amount to be raised. The city was held in check 
for two years, and in those two years prosperity was lost— 
the lawless prosperity that had hoisted even bread beyond 
the reach of the poor and sent them into such a rage that 
they attacked warehouses where flour was stored, and fling¬ 
ing the barrels to the street, covered the pavements with 
wheaten snow. 

Suddenly the banks began to topple, as a house of cards 
blown upon. A ripple went along the line of banks and 
every one of them went down. With them went other 
businesses in an avalanche. Prices shot from the peak to 
the abyss in a day. The fall of New York was but the 
opening crash. The whole proud nation fell in the dust, 
and the hardest times ever known in the New World made 
the very name of the year 1837 a byword of disaster. The 
favorite policy of the day was repudiation. Beggars, 
bankers, merchants, cities, states, blandly canceled their 
debts by denying them. 

“Now,” RoBards announced to his clients, “Now we’ve 
got the old wolf by the throat. His teeth and claws are 
falling out and he’ll have to let go of us as he is letting go 
of everything else.” 


78 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


But this was not to be. The great aqueduct that was 
to rival the works of Rome offered the despondent town a 
vision and a pride it needed and would not relinquish. It 
seemed all the more splendid to defy the hardship of the 
times and rear an edifice that would defy time. If the city 
were to be buried in poverty, it would at least have left a 
monument above its head. 

Even RoBards could not resist the fire of this resolve. 
After all he was an American, and New York was the 
American metropolis. And, besides, he was a lawyer and 
he loved an opponent who knew how to fight and had the 
guts to fight hard. 

And so the embattled farmers of Westchester knuckled 
to the inevitable, and the construction of the aqueduct began 
in the very hour of the general disaster. 

The legislature at Albany had all along been coerced by 
the members from New York City. It had made no dif¬ 
ficulty about granting a right of way across the lands of 
the State Prison. 

Through this unhappy territory went the Sing Sing Kill, 
and the kidnapped Croton River must be conveyed across 
that brook on a great stone bridge, with an arch of eighty- 
foot span, and twenty-five-foot rise with stout abutments of 
stone. 

In the allotments of the first thirteen sections of con¬ 
struction, Harry Chalender secured the Sing Sing field. 
RoBards would have been glad to see him inside the walls 
of the penitentiary, or in one of the chained gangs that 
constructed roads thereabout. 

But Patty was afraid that some of the desperate convicts 
might attack him, and she was as anxious for him as if 
he had gone to war. 


CHAPTER XI 


o NE day, while sinking an exploratory shaft, Chalender 
came upon a vein of the snowflake marble that underlay 
that region. He bored a tunnel through this frost that had 
become stone; and laid a royal pavement for the rural 
Croton to march upon to town. 

The first slab of marble that Chalender cut served him 
as a pretext for a visit to Tuliptree Farm. He brought it 
across country in a wagon and laid it down at Patty’s feet. 
He said he had been writing a poem all the way over, but 
the jolting of the wagon had knocked the meter askew, 
and the sight of RoBards had knocked the whole thing out 
of his sconce. 

That was his way. He had hoped not to find RoBards at 
home. Finding him there, he was impudent enough to con¬ 
ceal his dismay in its own exaggeration. He pretended to 
be caught in a rendezvous and played the scene with an imi¬ 
tation of the bombast of the popular young actor, Edwin 
Forrest. 

Patty laughed equally at Chalender’s burlesque of guilt 
and at her husband’s efforts to pretend amusement. Then 
she insisted that the slab be set down before the fireplace as 
a hearthstone, to replace the old block of slate that had 
been quietly cracking and chipping for years. 

This whim of hers offended her husband exquisitely, but 
she thwarted him by a show of hysterics, and he dared not 
protest; for she was once more in one of those states of 
mind and body where she must not be crossed. She was 
like a rose-tree budding every year with a new flower. Her 
third baby had died in the spring following the great fire. 
Still Nature would not relent, and another was already 
aglow within her protesting flesh. And in the fall of 1837, 

79 


8 o 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


that baby followed its brother to the grave. But that was 
to be expected. 

Nobody counted on raising more than half the children 
the Lord allotted. It was a woman’s duty to bear enough 
to have a few left to mature. Since nobody had discovered 
a preventive of disease, it was evidently Heaven’s pleasure 
to take back its loaned infants after running them through 
a brief hell of whooping cough, chicken pox, measles, fits, 
red gum, and scarlatina. 

Patty was an unheroic mother. She fought the doctor’s 
and the nurse’s orders to keep the babies bandaged tightly, 
and she was impatient with the theory that it was a good 
thing for a baby to cry all the time, and that it was well to 
have all the diseases and get them over with—or go under 
with them. 

Heaven was pleased that a wife should multiply her 
kind. What else was she for? If Heaven subtracted, that 
was the pleasure of Heaven. The orders were to bear much 
fruit. Families of sixteen or more children were not un¬ 
usual, and a dozen was hardly more than normal. Most 
of the family would soon be found in the graveyard, but that 
had always been so. The death rate among mothers was 
horrible, too; but they died in the line of duty and their 
husbands remembered them tenderly—unless their succes¬ 
sors were over-jealous. And it was a man’s duty to keep 
on taking wives so that the race should not perish—as it 
was a soldier’s duty, as soon as one charger died under him, 
to capture another. 

Patty grew almost blasphemous over the curse upon her 
sex. She resented her seizure by one of the wandering 
souls, and the long exile it meant from “the pursuit of hap¬ 
piness.” She called it “unconstitutional!” When the day 
of travail came she screamed like a tormented child, and 
when her hard-won puppet was taken from her she wept 
like a little girl whose toy is wrested away. 

Those weird deaths of souls hardly yet born were devas¬ 
tating to RoBards. He frightened Patty so by the first 
hideous sob she heard from him that he concealed his 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 81 

grief from her and sought only to console her as if he had 
lost nothing. It cost him heavily to deny himself the relief 
of outcry. 

On one subject at least he and Patty did not disagree. 
She would not have her lost babies taken to either of the 
graveyards at White Plains and Armonk. She asked to 
have their hardly tenanted bodies kept on the farm, and 
chose for them a nook where a covey of young tulip trees 
had gathered like a little outpost of sentinels. 

Always she vowed that she would have no more children: 
it hurt too much to see them die. And RoBards, though 
he longed for a forest of sons about him, felt a justice in 
her claim that she should have the decision since she carried 
the burden. But she was so tempting and so temptable that 
now and again passion blinded them again to peril, and she 
was trapped anew. Sometimes, in his black agonies of 
mourning, RoBards believed that these children were 
snatched from them because they were conceived in tempests 
of rapture, and not in the mood of prayer and consecration 
with which the preacher, Dr. Chirnside, declared the pa¬ 
rental altar should be approached. 

But Patty mocked RoBards’s solemnity when he broached 
the subject, and giggled at him as she peeked between her 
fingers and snickered, “Shame on you!” She had two 
weapons that always put him to utter rout—a naughty smile 
of pretended shock, and the quivering upper lip and tremul¬ 
ous wet eyelids of being about to cry. 

Often when her frivolous hilarities angered him and he 
made ready to denounce her, the mere tightening of the silken 
threads of her eyebrows and the puckering of her thimble 
chin admonished him that a shower of tears was in her sky, 
and he forbore. He could not endure to give her pain. His 
whole desire was to make her life one long, long blissfulness. 

Yet he seemed disqualified for this. He could rarely 
achieve entertainment. She did not find the luxury in his 
society that he found in hers. He had her beauty to bask in 
and she had only his tiresome earnestness or labored humor. 
Nowadays when he was kept in the city for a week or two 


82 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


during the sessions of the courts, she would not go to town 
with him. She pretended that it was the quiet contentment 
of the farmstead that held her, but he was not convinced. 

Patty’s father and mother still lived at Tuliptree Farm, 
and both were so querulous that Patty could hardly endure 
them. Yet she would not stay in town. 

It was more than a coincidence that Harry Chalender 
was neighbors with her now. He carried the city with 
him. He was New York enough for her. 

The times being hard and fees hard to collect, RoBards 
closed up the house in St. John’s Square. Lie could not 
rent it, but it was expensive to keep up, and lonely; so 
he took a room at the gorgeous new Astor House. 

Often when he came to the farm from the hot town he 
would note a strange elusiveness in Patty, the guilt of a 
mouse caught nibbling a cake. Or, else, she would be a 
little too glad to see him. The most suspicious trait was 
her occasional unusual solicitude for him: her anxiety to be 
sure just when he would return. 

Sometimes when he rode into the yard Cuff would say, 
“You jest missed Mista Chalenda.” He felt that he read 
a veiled disappointment in the ivory eyeballs as they rolled 
away from his scrutiny. But how could he ask an ex-slave 
such questions as rose to his tortured mind? How could he 
resent a servant’s unspoken criticism, without exposing the 
whole problem of his wife’s integrity? 

He would say to Patty carelessly: 

“Anybody been here?” 

But what could he say when she answered: 

“Only that stupid Harry Chalender, with his eternal talk 
of culverts and protection walls and drunken teamsters, and 
the prospects of a strike.” 

He had long ago learned that beneath her yawn was a 
readiness to fight. He was usually worn out with the 
worry and fag of the law courts where even the judges 
sat in shirt-sleeves and spat tobacco between their cocked-up 
feet. He came home for peace; but to Patty, a hot argu¬ 
ment brought refreshment from a day of languor or of 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


83 

boredom from her dull parents, or of light coquetry with a 
flattering gallant. 

She always whipped her husband out. She would 
whimper and make him a brute, or she would rail and storm 
till he implored her for quiet, to cheat the hungry ears of 
the servants or to appease the two terrified children who 
hung about his knees; or to escape the sullen glare of 
Patty’s father and mother. 

He felt that, instead of browbeating or being browbeaten 
by a delicate woman, he ought to go over to Sing Sing 
and horsewhip Harry Chalender. But that also had its in¬ 
conveniences, and he had no stomach for adding his own 
name to the list of knockabouts that accompanied the build¬ 
ing of the aqueduct. 

For, all along the right of way, as the landholders had 
prophesied, there was drunken brawling. A river of al¬ 
cohol paralleled the dry bed for the Croton. Farmers 
turned their homes into grog shops. Village tavern-owners 
and city saloon-keepers set up shanties under the dusty 
trees, whether the easily corrupted magistrates gave them 
licenses or not. 

Together with drink came every other form of dissipation. 
Gamblers and cheap tricksters abounded, and those burly 
harpies strangely miscalled “light women” came out of their 
overcrowded lairs in town until the innocent countryside was 
one sordid bacchanal. 

Whipped up with liquor and the mad eloquence it in¬ 
spired, the laboring men began to talk of their rights and 
wrongs and, above all, of their right to organize. In Eng¬ 
land the first efforts of the lower classes to combine against 
the upper, and form a new Jacquerie had been dealt with 
sharply, but without permanent success. 

The laws of the United States were strict enough, but 
loose talk of democracy was undermining them, and the 
toilers were gaining a sense of unity. They called them¬ 
selves “Workies” with an affectionate self-pity, and early 
in 1838 they achieved a turn-out (or, as they called it re¬ 
cently, “a strike”) for higher wages. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


84 

This mutiny had a short life, for the hard times and the 
vast mobs of unemployed made it easy for the contractors 
to replace the strikers, and the magistrates were severe. The 
contractors caused a panic by agreeing never on any terms 
to re-employ the ringleaders, and there were soon no ring¬ 
leaders. The others made haste to beg for mercy and to 
resume their picks and shovels with gratitude. 

One day Patty, to escape from the gloom of her parents, 
ordered Cuff to hitch up the carry-all and drive her over to 
see the construction camp. As she sat gossiping with 
Harry Chalender, who pointed out the rising walls of 
masonry, a quarrel arose between two laborers in a ditch. 
They bandied words like Hamlet and Laertes in the tomb 
of Ophelia, and then as if the first and second gravediggers 
had fallen afoul, they raised their picks and began a dread¬ 
ful fencing match that set Patty to shrieking and swooning. 

Chalender was capable as any other carpet knight of 
prodigies of valor so long as a lady’s eyes were upon him. 
He left Patty’s carriage wheel and ran shouting commands 
to desist. When the battlers paid him no heed, he was 
foolhardy enough to leap down between them. One pick 
dealt him a glancing blow on the skull, while the other struck 
deep into the sinews across his shoulder blades. 

Cuff told RoBards afterward that Miss Patty, instead of 
fainting at the sight of Chalender’s blood, sprang to the 
ground across the wheel and ran to him like a fury, slash¬ 
ing at the laborers with her fingernails. 

The workmen were aghast enough at the white victim they 
had unwittingly laid low, and they lifted him from the 
ditch. Patty dropped to the heap of fresh soil and took 
his bleeding form into her arms, tore away his shirt and 
with desperate immodesty made bandages of her own white 
pantaloons and stenched the gouts of red. 

Then she ordered that Chalender be picked up and placed 
in her own carry-all. And she brought him home with 
her. 

When RoBards came up from New York, Cuff told him 
the story before he reached the house. On the doorsill 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 85 

Patty confronted him with white defiance. She waited for 
him to speak. 

She dared him to speak. What could he say? 

She had saved the life of a wounded man. She had 
brought home a dying friend. The Good Samaritan had 
done no more and no less. 

RoBards could have wished the victim had been anyone 
else in the world, but he could hardly have wished his wife 
unequal to such a crisis. 

She stood waiting for him, grim, wan, her nostrils wide 
and taut, her lips thin and tight, her eyes ransacking his 
very soul. 

And so he said: 

“You are wonderful!” 

And then she broke down across the arm he thrust out 
to catch her; and she wept upon his heart, caressing his 
cheek with stroking hands, while she sobbed: 

“I love you. You are so sweet. Poor Harry, I thought 
they had killed him! He was so stupid! But you are so 
sweet!” 

And never was word bitterer in a man’s ears than that 
reiterated “sweet.” 


CHAPTER XII 


Fiends of suspicion laughed at the tenderness in Ro¬ 
Bards’ heart as he upheld his wife. The fiends called it 
“complacency/’ Fiends of irony mocked that complacency 
and told him that it was not lofty idealism or even consid¬ 
eration for her that withheld his wrath, but only a voluptu¬ 
ous unwillingness to surrender the possession of her pretty 
form. 

But whatever his true motives, he was more helpless than 
Chalender, where he found him prone on a couch in the 
library, biting on a mouthful of tufted quilt and stuffing it 
down his throat to stifle his howls of pain as the country 
doctor swabbed with a coarse towel the dirty red channel 
in his back. 

Chalender rolled his eyes up whitely at RoBards from 
the pit of hell, and then his gaunt face turned into snowflake 
marble as his head fell forward and he fainted. 

All that night RoBards acted as nurse for him, and for¬ 
giveness bled from him for any real or imagined injury 
he had received from Chalender. Hating the man as he did 
and believing that Chalender had seduced his wife’s inter¬ 
est and perhaps her very honor, he could not but feel that 
the wretch was doing penance enough. 

At midnight he had to walk out under the star-sprinkled 
roof of the tuliptree to give his eyes repose from the sight 
of anguish. The night brooded above, so beautiful, so be¬ 
nign that he wondered how God, the indubitable God who 
stared down at his little world he had made, could endure 
the hell he had created for the punishment of his creatures. 

A few hours had drained RoBards’ heart of resentment 
against the one rival in his one love, yet it was said and 
preached that God kept in the center of this world an eternal 

86 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


87 

vat of liquid fire where numberless children of his parentage 
screamed everlastingly in vain for so much as a drop of 
water on their foreheads. And all because six thousand 
years before one man Adam had broken a contract imposed 
upon him. 

Lawyer and believer in laws, RoBards could not fathom 
such ruthlessness, such rigor in a code of entailed sin. 
Humanity was growing kindlier toward its prisoners. 
Thirty or forty years ago, the French under the lead of 
Doctor Pinel had relapsed to the old Greek theory that 
the insane were innocent invalids, and should be treated 
kindly, not flogged and chained and reviled. This seemed 
to cast a doubt upon the belief that the mad folk were 
inhabited by devils, but the effects of gentleness were amaz¬ 
ing. And recently this infection of modem weakness and 
effeminacy had led to a theory of softer methods toward 
criminals. 

Good and pious men had protested against the cessation of 
capital punishment for thieves, but theft had not been in¬ 
creased by mercy. In the British Navy, the flogging of sail¬ 
ors had been discontinued and there were sentimentalists who 
pleaded that American sailors also should be protected from 
the horror of being stripped and lashed till their bare 
backs bled. But this dangerous leniency had not yet been 
tried. 

Over at this Sing Sing prison, however, where Chalender 
was building his section of the aqueduct, so called “prison 
reform” was under trial, and no great harm had come of 
it as yet. Where three thousand lashes with the cat-o’-six 
tails had been the monthly total, less than three hundred 
were inflicted now. Women were reading the Bible to 
the prisoners now and then. All the good old rigidities of 
discipline were giving way. 

The world was turning slowly and painfully from the 
ancient faith in cruelty and in men made cruder by a most 
cruel God, and RoBards felt his power to hate Chalender 
seeping out of his heart like sand stealing from the upper 
chamber of an hourglass. He tried to hold it, because it 


88 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


seemed indecent to endure the existence of one he suspected 
of so much as an inclination toward his sacred wife. But it 
slipped away in spite of him. When he needed his hate, it 
was gone. 

Night after night he fell asleep in his chair at the bed¬ 
side of his panting enemy, who moaned when he slept, but 
when he was awake smothered all sound and simply sweat 
and stared and gnawed at the quilt like a trapped rat. 

When RoBards woke he would often find Patty at his 
side, staring at Chalender while big tears slipped from her 
cheek and fell, streaking the air with a glistening thread of 
light. And she mopped with a little handkerchief the 
clammy forehead of Chalender, on whose knotted brow 
big drops of sweat glowed like tears from squeezed eyelids. 

RoBards was too tired to resent. He would lift himself 
heavily from his chair and go to his breakfast, and then to 
the gig that was to carry him to New York. He would 
sleep for miles, but his horse knew the way. He slept 
through hours of courtroom boredom, too, but at night in his 
room at the Astor House he was wide awake. 

Below him Broadway roared in the flare of its gas lamps, 
the busses going to and fro like vast glowworms. But his 
thoughts were in Westchester. 

He was further depressed by a hanging. At the new 
Tombs prison the first execution had just taken place. The 
dead criminal had murdered his wife, the pretty hot corn 
girl, whose cry, “Lily white corn! Buy my lily white corn!” 
rang in RoBards’ ears. It seemed impossible that any man 
should destroy so pretty a thing, a thing that he must have 
loved much once. The thought of the pretty girl made him 
anxious for his own pretty Patty. He was glad that he 
had not throttled her in one of his onsets of mad justice. 
He longed to hurry home to hear her voice and be sure of 
her. 

But he could not go back for many days. And then a 
shift in the docket suddenly released him and he set out 
at once. The long drive was an ordeal, but there was a 
wonderful sense of perfectness in his heart when his dusty 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


89 

horse at last turned into the road that gave his home to his 
eyes. He was the pilgrim whose strength just lasts the 
pilgrimage out. There was his Mecca, the Jerusalem of his 
heart’s desire! His home, the place established by his father, 
the fireside where his wife awaited him, the fane where his 
children were gathered. 

It was the spirit of the time to let the poetic mood exult 
in high apostrophic strains. He felt a longing to cry out 

something beginning with “O thou-!” He could not 

find the word enormous enough for his love, but the inar¬ 
ticulateness of his ecstasy shattered his soul with a joyous 
awe. 

Oh, that House where it waited on its hill, throned on 
its hill and reigning there! Thou Tulip Tree! that standest 
there like a guardian seneschal! or like the canopy above a 
throne! like something—he knew not what, except that 
it was beautiful and noble and beyond all things precious. 

As the horse plodded up the steep road, RoBards’ heart 
climbed, too. He was uplifted with a vague piety, such as 
he had felt when first he saw the dome of the Statehouse at 
Albany and felt the glory of citizenship, felt the majesty of 
his State. This home was the capitol of that people which 
was his family. It bore the name he bore, as a franchise, 
a title, a dignity, and therewith a mighty responsibility. 

It was his duty, it must be his pride, to keep that name 
clean and high; to keep that home a temple of unsullied 
honor. No enemy must tear it down, no slander must soil 
its whiteness, no treachery must dishonor it from within. 

The sun, sinking behind it, threw out spokes of light as 
from the red hub of a tremendous invisible wheel. The 
sun had the look of an heraldic device. 

The home was as quiet, too, as an armorial bearing. The 
children were taking their afternoon nap, no doubt, in the 
nursery. No doubt the old people were asleep in their upper 
room. His wife, where was she? He would love to find 
her stretched out slumbering across her bed like a long 
Easter lily laid along a pulpit. 

He did not see even Cuff, the old negro, who was doubt- 



90 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


less asleep in the barn on a pile of harness. RoBards tied 
his horse to the hitching post and moved with a lordly 
leisure to the porch. He had actually forgotten that there 
was a stranger in his house. His heart had been too per¬ 
fectly attuned to admit a discord. 

He paused on the top step and surveyed his domain. 
Along the contour of the horizon—and his horizon was his 
own—a team of big white horses moved, leaning against the 
collars that ruffed their necks. The plough they dragged 
through the soil flashed back the sunset as its keen share 
bounded from a sharp stone. After it plodded the farmer, 
*the lines about his loins, his whip sketching a long scrawl 
across the sky. He was going to put in his winter wheat. 

Along another hill an orchard was etched, the sky vis¬ 
ible beneath the branches that joined to form arches in a 
green colonade. Old fences of rail and stone staggered up 
and down the slopes, each of them a signature of some 
purchase his father had made, some parcel of land bought 
from some dead farmer. Beneath RoBards’ eyes, was the 
little garrison of tulip trees where his babies slept on earth. 
There was dew on his lashes and an edged pebble in his 
throat as his lips knit in a grimace of regret. Yet there was 
a holiness about his pain, and a longing that nothing should 
disturb this Sabbath in his soul. 

He turned to enter the open door, but he heard murmurs 
and a kind of hissing whisper that surprised him. He moved 
toward his library, and there, stretched out on the couch 
where he himself had sometimes rested when worn out with 
his lawbooks, he saw Harry Chalender lying on his right 
side. The quilt had fallen from one shoulder, since his left 
arm was lifted to enfold the woman who sat curled on a 
hassock before him and had just laid her lips upon his. 

RoBards could not move, or speak. He seemed not even 
to think or feel. He merely existed there. He was nothing 
but a witness, all witness. After a long kiss and a long sigh 
of bitter-sweet bliss, Patty murmured: 

“How wicked we are! how wicked!” 

Then she turned her beautiful head and stared across her 



“how wicked we are! how wicked!” 















WITHIN THESE WALLS 91 

shoulder and saw RoBards. He could think of nothing 
but of how beautiful she was. 

Chalender did not turn his head; but the amorous curve 
of his lips was fixed in a mask of love—inane, and petrified. 

Patty waited for RoBards to speak. But he did not 
know what to say, or to think. And he could not move. 


CHAPTER XIII 


IF Chalender had only risen in self-defence or reached for 
a weapon or spoken a word, whether of bravado or 
cowardice, it would have been easy for RoBards to rush him. 
If his lip had merely quirked with that flippant smile of his 
at life, it would have been a rapture to throttle him. 

But his lip was still pathetic with an arrested kiss, and in 
his eyes was the pain of desire. He did not know that Ro¬ 
Bards was looking at him. 

The animal instinct to destroy the man who had won his 
wife’s caress was checked by an instinct equally animal: 
the disability to attack the helpless and unresisting. 

First wrath had thrust RoBards forward. But his feet 
grew leaden upon the floor, as a multitude of impulses and 
instincts flung out of his soul and crowded about his will, 
restraining it like a mob of peacemakers, a sheriff’s posse 
of deputies. 

He had come from thoughts of piety before the meaning 
of his home, and his heart was devout. His eyes had just 
left off embracing with a mighty tenderness the graves of 
his two little children. 

The bare imaginations of their mother’s infidelity and its 
punishment were like sacrilegious rioters abusing the calm 
church within him. 

In his revolt, he could have called his eyes liars for pre¬ 
senting his wife to him in another man’s arms, and before he 
could see through the haze that clouded his vision, she was 
standing erect and staring at him with a dignity that defied 
either his suspicions or his revenge. He could have killed 
Patty for her own recklessness with her honor, which was 
his now. He understood in a wild flash of thought-lightning 
why the husband of “the pretty hot-corn girl” must have 
struck her dead. 


92 


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93 

Chalender had not moved, did not suspect. He was 
wounded; his fever was high. He might not live. 

Perhaps he had been in a delirium. Perhaps Patty had 
been merely trying to quiet him. But she had been saying, 
“How wicked we are!” as if cheaply absolving herself of 
sin by confession. 

Suppose RoBards charged her with disloyalty and she de¬ 
nied it. What proof had he ? He was the only witness. He 
could not divorce her for merely kissing a wounded visitor. 

Divorce! How loathsome! Nobody had yet forgotten 
old Aaron Burr’s brief marriage to old Betty Jumel or the 
recent noisome lawsuit that followed, in which Burr flattered 
her with four corespondents to her one for him. 

As a lawyer RoBards had many divorce trials brought to 
him and he abominated them. He had never had a night¬ 
mare so vile as the thought that be might have to choose 
between clamorous divorce and smothered disgrace. 

He wanted to die now rather than make the choice. To 
kill Chalender would seem almost a lesser horror. But that 
also meant exposure to the public. The burial of Chalender 
would but throw open his own home like a broken grave. 
It was only a detail that Chalender had saved his life the 
night of the fire when RoBards could not climb back to 
the wharf and no one else heard or heeded him. 

To butcher a wounded man, guilty so ever; to strip a 
woman stark before the mob, evil so ever; to brand his chil¬ 
dren, to blotch his home with scandal—pure infamy! But, 
on the other hand, to spare a slimy reptile; to be the cheap 
victim of a woman’s duplicity; to leave his children to her 
foul ideals; to make his home a whited sepulcher—infamy 
again. He felt that the children must be first to be con¬ 
sidered. But which way was their welfare to be sought ? 

Then the children themselves ran in upon his swooning 
mind, Imogene and Keith. He felt their tendril fingers wrap 
about his inert hands. He heard their piping cries of wel¬ 
come. He fell back from the door and was so weak, so 
sick that they easily pulled him to his knees and clambered 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


94 

on his back and beat him, commanding “Giddap!” and 
"‘Whoa, Dobbin!” 

The very attitude was a degradation. He was actually 
crawling, a brute beast on all fours with his young on his 
back. When he flung them off Keith bumped his head and 
began to cry, Immy to howl and boo-hoo! And they ran 
to their mother protesting that their Papa was mean, and 
hurted them. They turned to Chalender for protection. 
And this was Chalender’s first warning that RoBards had 
come home—home! what a dirtied word it was now— 
“home!” 

RoBards scrambled to his feet and dashed out of the in¬ 
tolerable place. 

Only the old tulip tree had dignity now. With a 
Brahmanic majesty it waved its long-sleeved arms above him 
and warned him that he must not let life drive him mad. 
His decision one way or the other did not matter much. 
Nothing he did or left undone mattered much. The leaves 
would come and go and come anew. The farmer was still 
striding along after his plough in a silhouette cut out against 
a scarlet west. 

Just one thing seemed important: the house pleaded with 
him not to dishonor it. It was older than he. It had cradled 
him. It had cradled his children. It wanted to cradle their 
children’s children. The lengthening shadow of the chimney 
had crept along the grass now till it lay like a soft coverlet 
on the beds of the little twain that had been lent him for 
a while. The very chimney had a soul of its own, and 
a good name. It seemed to implore him not to brand it 
as a place of evil resort. 

His knees gave way and he dropped to the ground, ren¬ 
dered idiot by the contradiction of his impulses. He saw 
old negro Cuff staring at him. The farmer’s wife paused 
at the back door to wonder. At an upper window Patty’s 
Teen leaned out to fix on him the white stare of her black 
face. 

Then someone came stepping toward him as timidly as a 
rabbit in dew-chilled grass. Someone sank down by him 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


95 

with a puff of floating silk and a drift of perfume across 
his nostrils. And then his wife spoke in the coldest calm¬ 
est voice he had ever heard from her, as if his discovery of 
her had discovered her to herself and had aged her in a 
moment. 

“Mist’ RoBards!” she pleaded, “Mist’ RoBards if it will 
save you any trouble, I’ll kill myself. I’ll fling myself down 
the well, or let you kill me if you would like that better. 
Some day you were bound to catch us together, Harry and 
me. I’m almost glad you did at last. I’ve been bad enough 
to destroy my own soul, but don’t let me break your heart or 
ruin your life. I’m not worth your grieving for, Mist’ Ro¬ 
Bards. I’ve been as wicked as I could be and for a long 
while, and now you’ve found me out—and I’m glad. Even 
if you kill me, I’m glad.” 

But he was not glad. Suspicion had burned and hurt, 
but knowledge was a knife through the heart; it was mortal. 
It killed something in him. One soul of his many souls was 
slain. His other souls were in a panic about its deathbed, 
as Patty went on, her voice queerly beautiful for all the 
hideous things it told: 

“Harry doesn’t know that you saw him—us. Nobody 
does. He isn’t in his right mind. He is weak and sick and 
I made myself pretty just to make him quit laughing at me. 
And if he dies, it will be my fault. 

“And that would be funny—for such a worthless little 
fool as me to cause so much trouble for two men, two such 
fine men. He is fine, in spite of all his wickedness, and 
he’s doing a great work that must go on. Let me go away 
and disappear somewhere. I’ll drown myself in your river, 
if I can find a place deep enough. And Harry need never 
know why. I don’t want him to know that you saw us. 
I couldn’t stand that. It’s of you I’m thinking. I don’t 
want him to know that you know about this terrible thing. 
It isn’t so bad, if he doesn’t know you know. For then 
you’d have to kill him, I suppose. 

“But please don’t kill him, for then they’ll try you and 
send you to prison or hang you and choke you to death be- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


96 

fore all the people. Oh, don’t let that happen, David. You 
couldn’t be so cruel to me as to let them kill you and 
hurt you and bury you in the Potter’s Feld on my account 
—don’t do that to me, Davie. I’ve loved you. In my way, 
I’ve loved you. I’m not good enough for you, but—if any 
harm should come to you, I’d die. Don’t look like that, 
Mist’ RoBards! Oh, don’t look so helpless and heart¬ 
broken and so unhappy. Don’t torture me to death that 
way!” 

And then it was he that sobbed and not she. He could 
feel her clutching at him and lifting him from the grass reek¬ 
ing with his tears. She drew his head into her soft arms 
and into her lap and set her lips against his cheek, but dared 
not kiss him, though her tears beat on his clenched eye¬ 
lids like the first big drops of a long rain. 

One little mercy was vouchsafed him and that was the 
sinking of the sun behind the hill; the blessed twilight came 
with its infinite suavity and the impalpable veils it draws 
across the harsh edges of things and thoughts. 

He saw the tide of the evening wind where it eddied 
along the grass and overflowed his hands and his face. He 
heard the farmer go up the dusty lane that muffled the tread 
of the tired horses, but not the little clink-clink of the har¬ 
ness rings. He supposed that the farmer was staring and 
wondering at him as he himself stared inside his own eye¬ 
lids at the world within him, and wondered at that. 

It grew cold. His wife’s hands chilled as they clenched 
his. He could feel her shiver. He could just hear her 
whisper through her chattering teeth: 

“Please come in, Mist’ RoBards.” 

He put away her arms and got to his feet. Then his 
dignity took on the look of mere sulkiness. When he saw 
Patty unable to rise, and huddled in a dismal heap, he bent 
and lifted her to her feet. She seemed unable to stand or 
walk; so his arm of it's own volition or habit went round her 
to hold her up. 

And at that she threw her arms about him and buried her 
face in his breast and sobbed. He looked through blurred 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


97 

eyes at the ambiguous sky where stars were thrilling in the 
rosy afterglow. In the dark house someone was lighting 
lamps. The lamps and the stars were tenderly beautiful, 
but they came only when all else was black. 

From the hall door a rug of warm yellow ran across the 
porch and down the steps into the path. The children began 
to call, “Mamma! Papa! where are you?” 

The house yearned toward him with its deep bosom. 
Something with the arms of a spirit reached out from it 
and drew him in. 

It was wrong to yield, but he had an utter need of peace 
for a while. He was wounded worse than Chalender, and 
needed more care. 

All that night it was as if Indians prowled about the house, 
savages that longed to drag forth the people within, to 
howl slanders and truths about them, to fasten them to 
stakes and dance a torture dance about them, cut off their 
eyelids and blind them with ruthless light. There were no 
Indians to fear now, save the stealthy reporters and the more 
merciless newspapers. 

But the house baffled them; it was a strong stockade. 
They should not have its children yet a while. It had won 
another day in its long battle against the invading strangers. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THAT night RoBards slept apart from his wife—in the 
spare room. He owed that much to his wrongs and she 
dared not try to wheedle him into the dangerous neighbor-' 
hood of her beauty. 

But first they heard the children’s prayers together. It 
was bitter to hear their sleepy voices asking forgiveness for 
their tiny sins and murmuring, “God bless Mamma and 
Papa and Mister Chalender! Amen!” Then the wet little 
good-night kisses scalded the cheeks of the divided parents 
who leaned across the cradles as across coffins and waited 
till sleep carried their babes away to the huge nursery of 
night. Then they parted without a word, without the chal¬ 
lenge of a look. 

He slept, too. All night he slept, better than ever. His 
strength had been shattered in a moment as if a bolt of 
lightning had riven him. He was a dead man until the 
morning brought resurrection and the problems of the 
daylight. 

The first thing he heard was a loud shout: 

“Jump her, boys! jump her! No water! There’s no 
water! We’ve got to get some gunpowder! Up she goes! 
Down she comes!” 

It was Harry Chalender in a delirium fighting the Great 
Fire again. His frenzy gave him the horrible sanctity of 
the insane. 

The doctor came over after breakfast. He shook his 
head. The wound was dangerous: the pick-blade had made 
an ugly gouge and gangrene might set in. There was pus 
in the wound. There was fever, of course, high, racking 
fever that fried his flesh till the very skin seemed to crackle. 

RoBards had not expected to go back to town for several 
days. He had needed the cool remoteness of his farm. 

98 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


99 

But now the solitude was like that uttermost calm into which 
the angels fell and made it Pandemonium. Now the place 
was crowded with invisible devils gibbering at him, shak¬ 
ing their horned heads over him in hilarious contempt, 
tempting him to everything desperate. 

He made an excuse to Patty that he had to return to the 
city. He spoke to her with the coldest formality. She made 
no effort to detain him, but this was plainly not from in¬ 
difference, for she answered like a condemned prisoner in 
the dock. 

“All right, Mist’ RoBards. I understand.” 

It broke his heart to see her meek. All the fire of pride 
was gone out of her. She was a whipped cur thing, and he 
could not put out his hand to caress her. 

Something in him, a god or a fiend, tried to persuade him 
that she was not to blame, that she had been the prey of 
currents stronger than herself. But whether the god or the 
fiend whispered him this, the other of the two spirits denied 
it as a contemptible folly. 

According to the law, women, as soon as they married, 
lost all rights to their souls, wills, properties, and destinies: 
yet if men were to forgive their wives for infidelities no 
home would be safe. This new-fangled mawkishness to¬ 
ward the wicked must have a limit somewhere. 

He had to go into his library for a lawbook that he*had 
brought with him on an earlier visit to his home—“visit” 
seemed the nice, exact word, for he was only a visitor now. 
Harry Chalender was the master of the house. 

RoBards expected to find the usurper in a delirium. 
But Chalender was out of the cloud for the moment. With 
a singularly fresh and boyish cheer, he sang out: 

“Hello, David! How’s my old crony ? Don’t let me keep 
you out of your shop. Go ahead and work and don’t mind 
me. I’m pretty sick, I suppose, or I’d take myself out of 
your way. Forgive me, won’t you ?” 

He asked forgiveness for a possible inconvenience, but 
kept in his black heart the supposed secret of his treachery! 
Yet something compelled RoBards to laugh and say that he 


IOO 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


was to make himself at home and feel right welcome. The 
dishonest glance he cast toward Chalender was met with a 
look of smiling honesty that reminded David of some lines 
he had heard the English actor Kean deliver at the theatre: 

“My tables—meet it is I set it down, 

That one may smile and smile and be a villain.” 

Yet he smiled himself, and felt that many a villain was 
more the hero than he. He hurried out of the room, fleeing 
from the helpless sick man who smiled and had no conscience 
to trouble him. 

He found that his horse had gone lame and could not 
take him all the way to New York. He drove the limping 
nag only so far as White Plains, and sent Cuff back with 
him. He waited in front of Purdy’s Store until the Red 
Bird coach was ready to start. He saw Dr. Chirnside wait¬ 
ing for the same stage, and he dreaded the ordeal of the old 
preacher’s garrulity. But there was no escape. The parson 
had come up to look over the churches in the Bedford Circuit 
and he was pretty sure to indulge in one of his long tirades 
against the evils of the times—especially the appalling 
atheism of the country, an inheritance from the Revolution¬ 
ary sentiments. The colleges were full of it—of atheism, 
drunkenness, gambling—but Dr. Chirnside seemed to dread 
atheism far less than he dreaded the other sects of his own 
faith. Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians were gaining a 
foothold in the countryside and he almost choked when he 
referred to the Catholics. 

All the way down to New York Dr. Chirnside’s tongue 
kept pace with the galloping horses. He began with the 
stage itself. He remembered when even carriages were 
almost unknown in the rural districts. Gentlemen rode 
horses and carried their necessaries in valises swung from 
the saddle; ladies rode on pillions. Then light wagons came 
in, and carioles next, gigs, chaises, and chairs. And now 
stages with their luxury and their speed of nearly ten miles 
an hour! 

As if that were not enough, a steam railroad was to ruin 
the peace of the country. Had Mr. RoBards ridden behind 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


IOI 


one of the engines that now drew the railway cars from the 
City Hall all the way to Harlem? No? He had been 
fortunate in his abstemiousness. 

“The speed of these trains is only another instance of our 
mad passion for hurry. After a time people will return to 
their sanity, and the stage coaches will drive the fire-breath¬ 
ing monsters back to the oblivion they came from. 

“Another evil of the railroad is that it will bring more 
and more of the wicked city element into the country. The 
aqueduct has practically ruined an entire region. Have you 
seen the hollow Chinese wall they are building for the 
Croton water? Ah, yes! Indeed! Most impressive, but 
if man’s work destroys God’s beautiful country where will 
be the profit? 

“The Continental Sabbath will soon destroy the rural 
peace as it has already destroyed New York’s good name. 
The chains are no longer drawn across Broadway before the 
church services and any Tom, Dick, or Harry may now 
drive his rattletrap past the sacred edifice on his way to 
some pagan holiday. 

“In the good old days even taking a walk on Sunday was 
recognized as a disrespect to the Lord. Nowadays men go 
driving! And not always without fair companions of the 
most frivolous sort. In my day a gentleman, passing his 
most intimate friend on the way to church, would greet him 
with a cold and formal nod. Nowadays people smile and 
laugh on Sunday as if it were merely a day like another! 
Where will it end? I tremble to think of it. 

“I have just witnessed an example of the extent to which 
the new lawlessness is carrying us. Fortunately I was able 
to deal with it sternly.” 

He told how some of the aqueduct laborers had spent 
their Sunday off, not in pious meditation and fasting, but 
in sauntering about the country. Their paganism had gone 
so far that when they came upon a patch of wild whortle¬ 
berries growing by the roadside, they brazenly began to pick 
and eat them and gather others to take to their camp. 

“Driving home from the service I chanced to see them, 


102 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


and I determined to put a stop at once to this violation of 
the laws of God and man. I ordered the county sheriff to 
arrest the culprits. They were fined a shilling each for the 
sacrilege. 

“Unfortunately, this was not the end of it. The depths 
of human depravity were disclosed in the behavior of these 
gross men. Only last Sabbath, instead of going to church, 
they hung about the village. Most unluckily, the sheriff’s 
daughter carelessly went into the garden and picked a few 
currants for the midday dinner. Whereupon the laborers 
called on her father and demanded that he arrest his own 
daughter. He had to do it, too, and pay her fine of a 
shilling. It will be a lesson to the wicked girl, but it rather 
undoes the good I was able to impress on the laborers.” 

Dr. Chirnside was aghast at such levity, such contempt 
for sacred things, but RoBards took no comfort in the 
thought that, since man’s quenchless thirst for horrors could 
be slaked with such trivial atrocities, his own tragedy was 
only one example more. 

He felt an almost irresistible impulse to seize the clergy¬ 
man by the sleeve and cry: 

“What would you say if I told you of what has been 
going on in my own home? My wife is a member of your 
congregation; she has been brought up with every warning 
against immodesty of thought or action, and yet—and 


He could not frame the story even in thought. He could 
not tell it. Yet if he did not tell, the secret would gnaw his 
heart away like a rat caged within. 

Dr. Chirnside could hardly have found appropriate gloom 
for this disaster since he was already in such despair over 
the habits of the modern women, that he had no superla¬ 
tives left for their dishonor. 

As the stage swung down into the city, lurching through 
mudholes that occasionally compelled it to take to the side¬ 
walk and scatter the pedestrians like chickens, he pointed out 
a girl strolling along with a greyhound on the leash of a blue 
silk ribbon. 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


103 

“See how our girls walk abroad unattended,” he gasped. 
“That young female has at least a dog to protect her, but it 
is appalling how careless parents are. No wonder our for¬ 
eign critics are aghast at the license we allow our ladies. 
They go about without a father or a husband to guard them 
from the insolence of bystanders. It is the custom, too, to 
permit couples who have been formally betrothed to be alone 
together without any guardian. In most of the homes sofas 
have been imported for them to sit upon. No wonder that 
New England people say that their old custom of bundling 
was less immodest. The very word sofa implies an Orien¬ 
tal luxury. 

“The dress of our women, too, is absolutely disgusting. 
When I was young there was an outcry against a new fash¬ 
ion of shortening the skirts in the rear so that the heels 
were visible. People frankly cried ‘Shame!’ at the sight of 
them. Nowadays ankles are openly exposed. Look at that 
pretty creature stepping across the gutter. She is actually 
lifting her petticoats out of the mud. No wonder those men 
all crane their necks to ogle! And her satin shoes are 
hardly more than cobwebs! 

“Their immodesty does not stop at the ankles. The bare 
bosom is seen! Really! I blush to mention what young 
females of excellent family do not blush to reveal. 

“It is perilous to health, too. You see our ladies gadding 
about in the bitterest weather with their necks uncovered, 
while gentlemen shiver under their great coats with five or 
six capes and heavy stocks and mufflers besides. 

“But the men are hardly more modest. This new fashion 
of—dare I refer to it?—of buttoning the pantaloons down 
the front instead of on the sides! It is astounding. One or 
two sermons have already been preached against it and I 
think I shall refer to it myself next Sabbath. Pardon me!” 

There was a respite while he took out his pocketbook and 
made a note of this urgent matter. RoBards remembered 
his own memorandum that a man may smile and be a rake 
as well. He could hardly keep from plucking at the par¬ 
son’s sleeve and confessing: 


104 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


“When you are in your pulpit, cry out also that one of 
the town’s pets, the popular Harry Chalender, has ruined 
the good name of my wife and our children and stained the 
old RoBards mansion with the wreckage of the Seventh 
Thou-shalt-not!” 

But Dr. Chirnside was putting up his pencil and putting 
forth his lean, cold hand for a farewell clasp. The stage 
was nearing City Hall Park and he must get out his fare 
and get down at his parsonage. 

And a little further below was the Astor House, which 
RoBards must call home henceforth. 

Dr. Chirnside had referred for his “thirteenthly” to the 
barbaric luxury of the new hotel, and to the evil influence of 
such hostelries on home-life. It had a bathtub on every 
floor! What Oriental luxury would come next? In many 
of the more religious states bathing was a misdemeanor, 
but in New York every crime flourished—and every sloth¬ 
fulness. The modern woman, unlike her mother, was too 
shiftless to care for her own household or even to oversee 
her servants: she preferred to live in a hotel and have more 
time and convenience for her idle mischiefs. 

But RoBards mused dismally that his home had gone to 
wrack and ruin first, and that the hotel was his only refuge. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE sumptuousness of the Astor House only emphasized 
RoBards’ exile. From his window he would look down 
upon the seething throngs along Broadway, the tall beavers 
of the men and the poke bonnets of the women bobbing 
along as on a stream. 

He would seek escape from solitude overlooking the 
multitude by retreating to the inner court and the fountain 
flaunting its crystal plumes in the turfed garden. But there 
was that quadrangle of many-windowed walls about him, 
and he felt Argus eyes upon him everywhere. Behind 
every curtain somebody seemed to be watching him. The 
expense of the luxurious hotel was heavy—a dollar a day it 
cost him, but he could not face boarding-house inquisitive¬ 
ness. 

In his office he would sit and brood across his pine table 
with its green baize cover, and stare at the pine boxes that 
held his books and the files of his cases tied with red tape. 
He would dip his quill into the inkstand of gray stone and 
make careless scratches on the paper before him. When he 
looked at them afterward they made him wonder if he were 
going mad. These crazy designs would serve as evidence 
for his commitment to any asylum. 

On the margins of his briefs he would wake to find that 
he had been making crude contours of Patty’s scoop hat, 
her big eyes, or the nape of her neck. He would blot her 
out in a fury of rage, and attack his work. 

The case of Jessamine vs. the City of New York was still 
hanging fire. Many of the claims of people who were forced 
to sell their lands for the aqueduct were still unsettled 
though their farms were covered with stone and trenched 
with ditches. 


105 


106 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

Yet now RoBards felt that the city had its justice. He 
had fought for the country and the country had betrayed 
him. Vile wickedness had found shelter and prosperity in 
the gentlest seclusions. 

It was a mockery that he should be the counsel for old 
Jessamine. What did he owe the dotard except hatred for 
bringing into the world so pretty a perjurer? The father 
had made Tulip-tree Farm almost untenable by his whim¬ 
pering stupidity and the daughter had driven him into exile 
by her ruthless frivolity. 

From his law office and his hotel RoBards would flee to 
a club. He had joined the fashionable Union Club just 
formed, but the members always asked him about his wife, 
and he had to speak of her with affection and respect. 

The affection was still in his heart, but the respect—he 
marveled at his ability to adore one whom he despised, to 
hang his whole life on the broken reed of a little woman’s 
wavering fancy. 

He frequented the theatre but he found discomfort there, 
since almost all the stories dealt with tragic or comic flirta¬ 
tions. He liked to go to the Bowery Theatre, but it was 
always burning down. Mary Taylor, “Our Mary” as they 
called her, puzzled him because she had a reputation for 
private morality and yet she was a convincing actress of 
spicy roles. Patty was not an actress at all—she was posi¬ 
tively imbecile in the drawing-room plays she had taken part 
in; yet her private life proved that her home was but a stage 
to her. Behind the private life of people there was so often 
another private life. And he had never been admitted until 
now to the green room of his own domestic theatre. Patty 
was a convincing actress of Innocence. 

Moods of retaliation were frequent. There were oppor¬ 
tunities enough. It amazed him now that he was alone in 
the city to see how many chances were offered him to make 
some other husband a fool. Young girls of fifteen or six¬ 
teen, who had not yet been married, or were only betrothed, 
dazed him by the black wisdom in their eyes. They scamp- 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


107 

ered and made pretenses of terror before him like kittens 
or puppies begging him to pursue them. 

Others were to be had of a more public character. It was 
estimated that there were ten thousand downright wicked 
women in the town. The streets at night were so crowded 
with them that innocent young girls, poor seamstresses or 
polite damsels whom some emergency forced to be abroad, 
were not only ogled and bespoken, but sometimes seized and 
kissed by the loiterers. 

The haunts of evil were well known, some of them foul 
dens, but others mansions. Yet the very sense that Patty 
had absolved him of obligation to her; that she herself had 
severed their contract, annulled the temptation. What ex¬ 
citement could he find it taking sneakingly what nobody 
could prevent his taking openly? 

Besides, as a lawyer he knew that the traps of blackmail 
lay all about the town—springes to catch woodcocks. The 
heads of many families were paying perennial taxes on such 
indiscretions. He knew of one banker who had been mulcted 
of thirty thousand dollars just because he chanced to be in 
the house where Helen Jewett was murdered. The trial of 
the young clerk charged with the crime was enormously ex¬ 
ploited by the noisy newspapers. 

That clerk was ruined for life, and he might well have 
wished that he had been employed by Mr. Tappan, the 
abolitionist silk merchant who compelled each of his clerks 
to sign a pledge never to visit a theatre or make acquaint¬ 
ance with actor, actress, or other person of evil life, never 
to be out of his boarding house after ten o’clock at night, 
never to miss the two prayer meetings a week, or the two 
Sunday services, or fail to report of a Monday morning 
the church, the preacher, and the text of the day before. 

A final check upon any recklessness in RoBards* lonely 
humors was the feeling that if he also sinned he would be 
robbed of his precious indignation against Patty. He was 
no prig, no prude. He had lived. But just now the one 
food of his soul was the sense of being cruelly wronged. 
It was gall, but it sustained him somehow. 


io8 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


In the eyes of the law a husband’s infidelity was almost 
negligible, but RoBards felt that if he were to break his 
vows he would acquit Patty of blame for being false to hers. 
There were families in town, according to gossip-mongers 
and the gossip papers, where husband and wife were mu¬ 
tually and commonly disloyal. But he could think of nothing 
more hideous than such households. 

He was Saint Anthony in a lonely cavern, but only one 
devil tried his soul and that was the bewitching spirit of his 
pretty wife. Patty drifted through his dreams like a wind- 
driven moth. She poised and flitted and opened her arms 
like a moth’s wings. And it seemed impossible that he 
should long resist her. 

One morning he read in the Herald (whose editor Mr. 
Bennett had recently had a knockdown fight with General 
Webb of the Courier) a statement that Mr. Henry Chal- 
ender had recovered from his wound and was once more 
active in the completion of his section of the aqueduct. The 
Herald added that this news would give relief and pleasure 
to the numberless admirers of the popular idol. 

This paragraph filled RoBards with mixed emotions. 
During his long indecision, his Hamlet-like soliloquies and 
postponements, nature had healed the wound in Chalender’s 
flesh, and, though he would not admit it, had nearly healed 
the wound in RoBards’ soul. 

There was a relief of tension at least. The world was 
going on. Chalender was well and busy—perhaps he was 
renewing his amour with Patty. Perhaps, deserted and 
lonely, she would yiefd again. That would be a double 
damnation. Anyone might sin and recover, but to slip back 
again was to be lost forever. 

Yet who was to uphold her in the hour of weakness? 
Who was to drive the wolf away from the ewe? 

Insidiously the temptations RoBards had denounced as 
complacency, servility, wanton desire took on now the aspect 
of duty. It was his duty to go home and take up wedlock 
again, to save the little silly beauty he had married from 
becoming a monster of iniquity. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 109 

Now that his house was freed of the intruder, homesick¬ 
ness came over him like a fever. He yearned for the hills 
of Westchester, those earthen breakers foaming with trees, 
and carrying on their crests houses like ships anchored on 
waves that never moved. 

His long sojourn in New York began to attract open com¬ 
ment, particularly as the heat was so vicious that it looked 
curious for anyone to remain who could get out. There was 
nobody in town now but nobodies. 

What excuse had he to linger? He had to rise and go 
back. He had not slain Chalender. This abstention in itself 
had amounted to an acquittal. If he were not going to 
punish Chalender, why should he punish himself? If his 
aim were to escape gossip, why encourage it? 

He went home. Patty was in the yard playing a game 
with the children. They seemed to have grown amazingly 
since he left. They ran to him screaming welcome. It was 
bliss to feel their warm hands clutching him. 

He could see that Patty was afraid to move either toward 
him or away. She had never written to him, but 'he had felt 
that this was meekness rather than neglect. She waited 
now struggling between a cry of joy and a fit of tears. 

He pretended that it was for the children’s sake that he 
called out: 

"Hello, Patty!” 

"Hello, David!” she murmured. Suddenly her eyes were 
gleaming with tears. 


CHAPTER XVI 


The old Jessamines stared at him, but summed up their 
curiosity and their resentment in a “Well! So you’re back?” 

“Yes,” he said, the answer sufficient to the question. 

He was embarrassed to find that a cousin of his wife’s 
was visiting the farm and the spare room was filled. He 
had to go back with Patty. But they were like two enemies 
in the same cell. 

Sometimes he would wake suddenly in the night from a 
hell of self-contempt. He would both sweat and shiver 
with remorse for the shame of having let Ghalender live. 

In his half-insanity it seemed a belated duty to go out 
and assassinate the villain. To shoot him down openly 
would be too noble a punishment—like shooting a spy. To 
garrote him, string him up squirming from a tree limb would 
be best. Major Andre had wept pleading to be shot, but 
they had hanged him—not far from Tuliptree Farm. And 
only recently people had dug up his grave and found the 
tiny roots of a tree all grown about his curly hair. 

Chalender had sneaked into RoBards’ home and Patty 
had played the Benedict Arnold to surrender the citadel to 
the enemy. He deserved to be put out of the way like a 
poisoned dog, a sheep-killer, a lamb-worrier. 

Sitting up in his bed with night all about him RoBards 
would enact some grisly murder, often while Patty slept at 
his side unheeding the furies that lashed her husband and 
mocked him for his forgiveness like Christ’s of the woman 
brought before him. 

In the restored innocence of sleep, Patty’s face was like 
a little girl’s with its embroidery of her curls, one shoulder 
curved up, a round white arm flung back above her head, her 
bosom slowly lifting and falling with her soft breath. 


no 


Ill 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 

Sometimes as he gazed at her, his heart welled with pity 
for her; at other times he was frantic to commit murder 
because of her. 

But the big tree at the window would try to quiet him 
like an old nurse; it would go “Hush, hush!” The house 
would seem to sigh, to creak as if its bones complained. 
And it, too, would counsel him, “No! no!” 

The ferocity of such debates would wear him out more 
than a prolonged contest in court, and he would sink back 
and draw sleep over him as a black blanket of respite from 
thought. 

At other times when Patty was gracious and full of laugh¬ 
ter, when she was in a mood to be a child with her children 
and play with them, there would be a heavenliness in life 
that made RoBards cry aloud within himself, “Thank God 
I kept the secret.” 

By and by there was a child again at Patty’s little breast 
—the fifth in number, the third alive. She had resigned 
herself to motherhood now. She nursed the babe and took 
all the care of it without complaint. She met RoBards at 
night when he came up from town, with stories of the won¬ 
derful things the new son had achieved or the older babes 
had said. 

It pleased him quaintly to find his wild, restless Patty 
becoming a subdued and comfortable matron, telling unim¬ 
portant anecdotes importantly. She kept her grace and her 
beauty and she could never grow slattern; but she was 
maternal now to her marrow. 

Regarding the deep peace of his country family, RoBards 
was profoundly glad that he had forgone the swift pas¬ 
sionate delights of revenge. If he had slain Chalender or 
published the scandal in the courts, Patty would not have 
been his now. That child whom she had named after him¬ 
self, David Junior, would have been doomed to an unhon¬ 
ored name. This house would have been pointed to as a 
monument of scandal. It would be neglected, empty, 
haunted. 

The neighbors never dreamed of the hidden shame. They 


ii2 4 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

said: “Nothin’ ever happens up your way. You’re one 
lucky man.” 

Nearly every other dwelling had some scandal hung upon 
it like a signboard from a tavern. Not many miles up the 
road was a house of a strange memory. A widow lived 
there—she called herself a widow, but the neighbors called 
her “a queer un.” They told how a negro preacher freed 
by his master had settled up in New Hampshire fifty years 
before and been so much respected that he had married a 
white woman and had many children; and these children 
had had children. And one of them had married this woman 
when she was young and high-stepping. The first she knew 
of her husband’s grand-parentage was when a gossip twitted 
her with it. She said nothing, but made an excuse for a 
trip to the Bermudas with her husband. As soon as she got 
him there, she sold him at a good price into slavery, and 
came home calling herself a widow. 

For that matter, one of the presidents of the United States 
had been sued in the open courts by a negress for the sup¬ 
port of their child; it was said that he sold many of his 
mulatto children, and that his only indulgence was that when 
any of his own escaped he would not hunt them with 
hounds, but laughed and let the rascals escape if they could. 

The present president of the United States had been in 
the divorce court and had turned Washington inside out 
with domestic bickerings. 

Nearly all the founders of the republic had been plastered 
with scandal. Many of them were infidels and Dr. Chirn- 
side was always bewailing the decay of religion under the 
republic. 

So RoBards reasoned that if there were scandal in his 
home, it was only what every other home had. The good 
thing was that his shame was hidden. His house was looked 
upon as a place of honor. It was unsullied. It must be 
kept of good repute. There was a certain kind of hypocrisy 
that was wholesome and decent and necessary to good citi¬ 
zenship. 


CHAPTER XVII 


Time was spreading its rust and its vines over every¬ 
thing, eating away the edges of his passions and fastening 
the hinges of his will so that it could not turn. 

The hate he felt for Chalender was slowly paralyzed. 
Having forborne the killing of him lest the public be ap¬ 
prised of what he had killed him for, it followed that 
Chalender must be treated politely before the public for the 
same reason. Thus justice and etiquette were both sub¬ 
orned to keep people from wondering and saying, Why? 

Being unable to avoid Chalender, he had to greet him 
casually, to pass the time of day, even to smile at Chalender’s 
flippancies. Under such custom the grudge itself decayed, 
or retreated at least to the place where old heartbreaks and 
horrors make their lair. 

There was much talk of Chalender’s splendid engineering 
work. His section of the aqueduct prospered exceedingly. 
He had a way with his men and though there was an occa¬ 
sional outburst, he kept them happier and busier than they 
were in most of the other sections. 

He had a joke or a picturesque sarcasm for everyone, 
and the men were aware that his lightness was not a dis¬ 
guise for cowardice. They remembered that when two of 
them had fought with picks, he had jumped into the ditch 
between them. He could now walk up to drunken brutes of 
far superior bulk and take away their weapons, and often 
their tempers. He composed quarrels with a laugh or 
leaped in with a quick slash of his fist on the nearest nose. 

People said to RoBards: “Fine lad, Harry Chalender, 
great friend of yours, isn’t he? Plucky devil, too.” 

That was hard to deny without an ugly explanation. It 
113 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


114 

would have been peculiarly crass to sneer or snarl at a man 
held in favor for courage. 

So the tradition prospered that Chalender and RoBards 
were cronies. It was a splendid mask for the ancient resent¬ 
ment. And by and by the disguise became the habitual 
wear, the feelings adapted themselves to their clothes. He 
would have felt naked without them. 

RoBards had to shake himself now and then to remind 
himself that he was growing not only tolerant of Chalender, 
but fond of him. 

This was not entirely satisfactory to Patty. She had a 
woman's terrified love of conflict in her behalf. A woman 
who sees a man slain on her account suffers beyond doubt, 
but there is a glory in her martyrdom. Patty’s intrigue had 
ended in a disgusting armistice, a smirking truce. It was 
comfortable to have a husband and a home, but it was 
ignominious to have the husband at peace with the intruder. 

The aqueduct was all the while growing, a vast cubical 
stone serpent increasing bone by bone and scale by scale. 

It still lacked a head, and RoBards the lawyer like a tiny 
Siegfried continued to assail the dragon everywhere, seeking 
a mortal spot. 

The Croton dam was yet to be built, as well as two big 
bridges and two great reservoirs in the city. It grew plain 
that the seven miles within the island of Manhattan would 
cost nearly as much as the original estimates for the whole 
forty-six. 

And the times were cruelly hard. The estimates rose as 
the difficulty of raising money increased. Four and a half 
million dollars were disbursed without the error of a cent, 
and the devotion and dogged heroism of all the water army 
won even RoBards’ admiration. 

By the beginning of 1841 thirty-two miles were finished, 
including Harry Chalender’s section. He was called next to 
aid the work of completing the dam. A new lake now sub¬ 
merged four hundred acres of hills and vales with a smooth 
sheet of water. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


115 

Then the laborers on the upper line struck for higher 
wages and marched down the aqueduct, driving away or 
gathering into their own ranks all the workmen they met. 
They overawed the rural police, but when the Mayor of 
New York called out the militia, the laborers were forced 
back to their jobs. 

The building of the dam was a work of titanic nicety. 
The rock bottom of gneiss was so far down that an artificial 
foundation had to be laid under a part of the wall, while a 
long tunnel and a gateway must be cut through living rock. 
A protection wall was building from a rock abutment, but 
there came a vast rain on the fifth of January and it fell 
upon the deep snow for two days and nights. The overfall 
had been raised to withstand a rise of six feet, but the flood 
came surging up a foot an hour until it lifted a sea fifteen 
feet above the apron of the dam. 

Foreseeing a devastation to come, a young man named 
Albert Bray ton played the Paul Revere and ran with the 
alarm until he was checked by a gulf where Tompkins 
Bridge had stood a while before. Then he got a horn and 
played the Angel Gabriel: blew a mighty blast to warn the 
sleeping folk on the other shore that their Judgment Day 
had come. 

The earthen embankment of the dam dissolved and took 
the heavy stone work with it. Just before dawn the uproar 
of the torrent wakened the farmers miles away as the cata¬ 
pult of water hurtled down the river, sweeping with it barns, 
stables, homes, grist mills, cattle, people, and every bridge 
across the Croton’s whole length, till it flung them upon the 
Hudson’s icy waste. 

The Quaker Bridge, which carried the Albany stages, 
went swirling; also the Pines Bridge that Washington and 
his men had traversed time and again. At Bailey’s iron and 
wire mills the snarling wave fell so swiftly upon the settle¬ 
ment that it made driftwood of the factory and flung fifty 
women and men from their beds into the current. There 
was such a fleet of uprooted trees afloat that all of the people 
were saved except two stout men who overweighted the 


n6 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

boughs they clung to. A Mr. Bailey waded breast deep 
carrying his father and a box of gold in his arms and got 
them both to safety. 

Harry Chalender played the hero as usual. After one 
laborer on the dam had lost his outstretched hand and was 
drowned, he ran along the black waters and darting in here 
and there brought forth whatever his hand found, whether 
girl or babe, lowing calf or squeaking pig. He brought one 
swirling bull in by .the tail and had like to have been gored 
to death for his courtesy. But with his wonted nimbleness 
he stepped aside, and the bull charging past him plunged 
into another arm of the stream and went sailing down with 
all fours in air. 

The collapse of the dam was a grave shock to the public 
confidence. It meant a heavy loss in precious cash and its 
time equivalent, but the Crotonians grew only a little grim¬ 
mer, a little more determined. 

There was much blazon of Chalender in the newspapers, 
and a paragraph describing how meek he was about the 
strength and courage of his own hands and how proud of 
the fact that his section at Sing Sing had stood the battering 
rams of the deluge without a quiver. 

Patty’s’ comment on this was a domestic sniff: “I suppose 
he got his feet so wet he’ll catch a terrible cold. Well, I 
hope he doesn’t come here to be nursed. If he should I’ll 
send him packing mighty quick, I’ll tell you.” 

Comment was difficult for RoBards, to whom the men¬ 
tion of Chalender’s mere name was the twisting of a rusty 
nail in his heart, but his mind leaped with a wonderful 
meditation: 

There had been progress not only in the building of the 
aqueduct but in the laying of a solid causeway under the feet 
of his family. A sudden storm had swept Patty’s emotions 
over the dam of restraint and wrecked their lives for a 
while, but now the damage was so well repaired that she 
could speak with light contempt of the man who had carried 
her heart away; she could say that she would shut in his 
face the door to the home he had all but destroyed. Plainly 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


ii 7 

the house was now her home, too, and Chalender vagrant 
outside. 

This thought filled RoBards’ heart with a flood of over¬ 
brimming tenderness for Patty. He watched her when she 
tossed the newspaper to the floor and caught her more ex¬ 
citing baby from its cradle to her breast. She laughed and 
nuzzled the child and crushed him to her heart and made 
up barbaric new words to call him. Calling him Davie Junior 
and little Davikins was in itself a way of making love to 
her husband by the proxy of their child. 

The sunlight that made a shimmering aureole about her 
flashed in her eyes shining with the tears of rapture. Ro- 
Bards understood one thing at last about her: She wanted 
someone to caress and to defend. 

He had always read her wrong. He had offered to be 
her champion and to shelter her under his strong arms. But 
Chalender had won her by being hungry for her and by 
stretching his arms upward to drag her down to him. 

RoBards felt that he had never really won Patty because 
he had always been trying to be lofty and noble. She had 
rushed to him always when he was dejected or helpless with 
anger; but he had always lost her as soon as he recovered 
his self-control. 

He wished that he might learn to play the weakling before 
her to keep her busy about him. But he could not act so 
uncongenial a part at home or abroad. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


After years of waiting and wrangling, labor conflicts, 
lawsuits, political battles, technical wars, and unrelenting 
financial difficulties and desperate expedients, through years 
of universal bankruptcy, the homely name of the Croton 
River acquired an almost Messianic significance in the popu¬ 
lar heart. 

There was already a nymph “Crotona” added to the city’s 
mythology. The thirsty citizens prayed her to hasten to 
their rescue from the peril of another fire, another plague, 
the eternal nuisance of going for water or going without. 

Other history seemed of less importance, though tremen¬ 
dous revolutions had been effected in the democracy. The 
property qualification had been at last removed and the 
terrible risk assumed of letting all men vote without regard 
to their bank accounts. The religious requirements for office 
holders had also been annulled in all the states. There had 
been fierce riots, of course, but the promised anarchy had 
not followed. This gave a new boldness to the annoying 
fanatics who asked for three downright impossibilities: the 
abolition of slavery and of liquor, and the granting of equal 
rights to women. 

Numbers of shameless females broke into public life and 
some of them into breeches. Mobs of conservatives raided 
their meetings, and chased them hither and yon; but still 
they raved and several effeminate or half-crazed men openly 
preached against slavery in the South. The bulk of the 
clergy of all denominations was, of course, against them. 

The Marquis of Waterford had made himself notorious 
with his riotous gayety and his clashes with the night watch¬ 
men, the Leatherheads. A fifty-year-old veteran of Water¬ 
loo had married a sixteen-year-old heiress in a boarding 

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WITHIN THESE WALLS i 19 

school secretly and had received enormous attention from 
the newspapers. 

Fanny Elssler had danced herself into the favor of the 
people and the horror of the pulpit. Daniel Webster had 
thundered for the Whigs. The streets had roared with the 
campaign cry of 'Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.” Hard cider 
had become a slogan and log cabins a symbol. A log cabin 
had been built at Harrison’s, a few miles from Tuliptree 
Farm. It served later as a schoolhouse. Then President 
Harrison died of indigestion a month after his inauguration. 

The hard times grew harder and harder. The inpour of 
foreign immigrants increased till New York became almost 
a foreign city. The Native-Americans anxiously formed a 
party and their nominee received all of seventy-seven votes; 
he was a painter named S. F. B. Morse who had invented a 
curious toy he called the telegraph. He wanted Congress 
to help him stretch a wire from Washington to Baltimore 
for him to play with. 

The churches started an hegira uptown. One of them 
was set out as far as Tenth Street on Fifth Avenue, which 
had recently been opened through the farms beyond Wash¬ 
ington Square. A mission had been established in the for¬ 
eign world of the Five Points, where it amused the populace 
of the brothels and crime cellars. 

Crime increased and flourished appallingly and the news¬ 
papers were unfit for the home. The murderer Colt, having 
cut up the body of his victim, salted it, and shipped it to 
New Orleans; was caught, tried, and convicted; then, hav¬ 
ing married a foolish woman in his cell, stabbed himself to 
death and died while the guards of the Tombs fought a fire 
of mysterious origin. 

The “beautiful cigar girl” furnished another mystery and 
an excuse for revolting journalism. RoBards had bought 
tobacco of her during his exile in town and had watched 
with sardonic disdain the wily smiles she passed across the 
counter to her customers who came more for flirtation than 
for weeds. One day she vanished and after a time her body 
was found drifting in the river near the Sibyl’s Cave in the 


120 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


beautiful Elysian Fields at Hoboken. She had evidently 
fought a desperate battle with her murderer, but had been 
flung bruised and beaten into the water. Her murderer was 
never discovered. People said he was a naval officer, but 
they could not prove it. 

One of the cheap and popular newspaper men named 
Edgar Allan Poe made an ephemeral mystery story out of 
it. It was exciting but, of course, not literature. His name 
was never included in the list of dignified authors whom the 
defenders of American art compiled to prove to the English 
critics that good writing was possible on this side of the 
Atlantic. 

Dr. Lardner came over from England and proved con¬ 
clusively that steam was impracticable for crossing the 
ocean. Shortly afterward a steamer brought across the 
popular English serial writer, Charles Dickens, and the 
people lavished on him attentions which he rewarded with 
infuriating contempt. Captain Marryat and other English¬ 
men, and women like Mrs. Trollope, began a book bombard¬ 
ment against the pride of the new republic, and roused it to 
fury. 

But all the while the city panted like a hart for its Croton 
water brooks, and the engineers redoubled their efforts. 
They decided not to wait for the High Bridge and im¬ 
provised a temporary passage across and under the Harlem 
River. The hope was revived that water would come into 
the city on Independence Day. 

Swarms of masons toiled at the two reservoirs until they 
stood at last waiting, like vast empty bowls held up to 
heaven for a new Deluge. The flood was to be received at 
the Yorkville reservoir, carried on by iron pipes to Murray’s 
Hill, and distributed thence by pipes about the city, with a 
special dispensation to the old well and tank that had been 
erected in 1829 at Thirteenth Street to feed the hydrants 
that replaced the foul old public cisterns. 

Everywhere the streets and the houses were torn to pieces, 
pipes were laid in all directions and fountains built. The 
plumber was the hero of the hour. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


121 


The test of fashion was a faucet in the kitchen. 

On a hot day in June the Water Commissioners and the 
engineers, including Harry Chalender, began a strange pil- 
grimake through the thirty-three miles of tunnel, for a 
last anxious inspection. It took them three days to make 
the patrol on foot. 

The vents along the way for the escape of water from 
deep cuttings and leakages were closed once for all. And 
on the twenty-second of June the Croton River began its 
march upon New York. At five o’clock in the morning the 
head of the stream was admitted and on the primal tide,, 
some eighteen inches deep, a boat was launched. The Croton 
Maid weighed anchor to descend upon New York with the 
“navigable river” from the north. 

Harry Chalender made one of the four passengers on that 
“singular voyage” through the great pipe at the rate of a 
little better than a mile an hour. The “Maid” came up for 
air at the Harlem River the next day, a Thursday, soon after 
the first ripple of the water laved the borders of Manhattan 
Island. 

The Commissioners formally notified the Mayor and 
Common Council that the Croton River had arrived and 
would proceed after a brief rest to Yorkville Reservoir. 

On Monday afternoon the Governor of the State, the 
Lieutenant Governor, the Mayor, and other distinguished 
guests drew up in solemn array and greeted the “extinguish¬ 
ing visitor,” while the artillery fired a salute of thirty-eight 
guns. 

When the Croton Maid sailed into the reservoir she was 
made grandly welcome and then presented to the Fire De¬ 
partment, with appropriate remarks on the “important re¬ 
sults pecuniary and moral which may be expected to flow 
from the abundance of the water with which our citizens 
are hereafter to be supplied.” 

On the Fourth of July Queen Crotona resumed her royal 
progress and proceeded the necessary parasangs to Murray’s 
Hill, pausing to fire the salute of a beautiful jet of water 
fifty feet in air at Forty-seventh Street. 


122 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


It was noted by one of the observers that when the waters 
of the Croton gushed up into the reservoir they “wandered 
about its bottom as if to examine the magnificent structure 
or to find a resting place in the temple toward which they 
had made a pilgrimage.” That river was as much of a god 
to the New Yorkers as old Tiber ever was to Rome, or 
Nilus to Egypt. 

But thereafter the stream, like another conquered Andro¬ 
mache, became the servant of New York, pouring into its 
thirsty throat twelve million imperial gallons of pure water 
every day. 

The people congratulated themselves upon this achieve¬ 
ment of their city single-handed in a time of national finan¬ 
cial prostration. In the memoir written by the chief engi¬ 
neer, J. B. Jervis, he proudly compared the new aqueduct 
with the great works of Rome, built under contracts with 
private speculators, paid for with the plunder of ruined 
peoples, and “cemented with the blood of slavery.” The 
Croton work was a triumph of a city of 280,000 inhabitants, 
who wrought a task, said Jervis, “on a scale greatly beyond 
their actual or any near future wants, but which, designed 
to endure for ages, would bear record to those ages, however 
distant, of a race of men who were content to incur present 
burdens for the benefit of a posterity they could not know. 
Magnificent as may be the works of conquerors and kings, 
they have not equaled in forecast of design, and beneficence 
of result, the noble aqueduct, constructed at their own cost, 
by the freemen of the single city of New York.” 

Much eloquence, much of the bold and braggart Yankee 
eloquence so distasteful to foreigners and to foreign-hearted 
Americans, was squandered on that feat of theirs; but be¬ 
fore they talked, they had toiled; they sweat before they 
boasted; they fought the epic before they chanted it; and 
their words were not so big as the stones they heaved into 
place. Their phrases were less ponderous than the majes¬ 
tic forty-six-mile sentence in stone they wrote across the 
green valley of the Westchester hills, through rock and air, 
over hills and ravines, through villages and streams, across 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


123 

the Harlem River and down into the heart of Manhattan 
Island. 

But the massive High Bridge was yet to build and the 
Croton had yet to reach the lower fountains and the homes 
of the citizens. They had waited long for it, and it meant 
miraculous relief to have the river from far away magically 
bubbling in the very houses at the wizard twist of a faucet 
handle, and sending up geysers of beauty in the hot parks. 
Many of the New Yorkers who marveled told how they had 
in their day paid a penny a gallon for water from the carts 
that peddled the product of the “Tea Water Pump.” Even 
David and Patty RoBards could remember when they fled 
the town and thought it doomed to die of drouth and 
pestilence. 

The city felt that this immortal benison must be com¬ 
memorated fittingly. When the New River had entered 
London the Lord Mayor had addressed it in his full splen¬ 
dor. When the waters of Lake Erie had come through the 
canal to New York they had been married to those of the 
ocean with grandiose ceremonial. 

So now the Board of Aldermen appointed a committee, 
and the committee called upon General George P. Morris to 
write an original ode and the Sacred Music Society to sing 
it. “The Society’s vocal performers were rising two hun¬ 
dred, male and female.” The bells of the churches were 
bidden to ring; the artillery to fire salutes. All the dis¬ 
tinguished personages on the continent were invited to attend 
and witness the most resplendent procession ever devised. 

The date was set for the fourteenth of October and the 
citizens devoted themselves to the preparation of banners, 
uniforms, and maneuvers, and the polishing of fire-engines, 
swords, shoes, and phrases. 

An invitation was addressed to the President of the United 
States, but Mr. Tyler was prevented by “circumstances”; 
and the ex-President John Adams by “indispensable engage¬ 
ments at home.” Ex-President Van Buren found it not in 
his power to avail himself of the polite invitation. Governor 
Seward had “a severe indisposition,” but accepted. The 


124 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

British Consul accepted “with feelings of no ordinary kind,” 
and remarked that “tyrants have left monuments which call 
forth admiration, but no work of a free people for magni¬ 
tude and utility equals this great enterprise.” The Consul 
of France presented his compliments and would be happy to 
join with them. The Consul of Prussia had much pleasure 
in accepting. The Consul of the Netherlands had the honor 
of joining. The Consul for Greece and Count Heckscher, 
the Consul for Mecklenburg, regretted, but the Consuls of 
the Two Sicilies, the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Frankfort, 
and Venezuela accepted. The Consul of Mexico was pre¬ 
vented by absence, and the Consul of Texas, the recent re¬ 
public of Texas, feared that his “engagements of the day 
would deprive him of the pleasure.” 

Officers of the navy, the army, the bench, governors, 
mayors, engineers, bankers, and others innumerable ac¬ 
cepted or declined. The common people prepared to turn 
out in a body. 

The enthusiasm was so pervasive, that even the children 
felt the thrill of the epochal day. The RoBards youngsters, 
little Keith and his sister Immy, were feverish. The very 
baby at Patty’s breast seemed to beat the air and crow like 
chanticleer at the mention of the Fourteenth of October. 

The one sure bribe for good behavior was a promise to 
go to New York for the parade; the one effective punish¬ 
ment a threat of being left at home. 

Hardly an account of the aqueduct or the festival omitted 
Chalender’s name, and RoBards grew so accustomed to it 
that he all but forgot the horror it had once involved. 

He was himself infected by the glory of the hour. It 
was like seeing one of the Pyramids dedicated, or the Sphinx 
christened. 

Time that makes us grateful for our defeats and turns 
our victories to chagrin dealt so with RoBards. Though he 
had hampered the work and denounced its trespass on the 
rights of the landholders, he felt glad now that he and they 
had been defeated. Chalender was gracious in his triumph, 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


125 

and felt all the more genial since the victory had been en¬ 
hanced by the high mettle of the opponents. 

So everybody was happy and proud, and the aqueduct 
itself took on something of the sanctity of a long, long 
temple, a source of health and security and of unbounded 
future growth. 

RoBards spoke of this to Patty and said that the names 
of the men who had fought this long battle through would 
be immortal. 

“Who are they?” she said with a disconcerting abrupt¬ 
ness. 

And to save him he could not think of them, though he 
knew the names of many picturesque criminals, and of per¬ 
sons whose only importance was some fashionable prestige. 
He knew the names of many who had pounded out a little 
poem or braided a piece of clever fiction. He knew the 
names of manufacturers of popular soaps and razor strops, 
but he could not recall the giants who had wrested the rocks 
from the hills and laid down the new channel for the river 
that would redeem the chief city of the continent. 

He had to refer to the memoir of the Commissioners and 
to read aloud the passage: “Samuel Stevens, Esq., was the 
presiding officer of the Board of Commissioners in 1829, 
whose name and services will be recorded with those of 
Stephen Allen, and Douglas and Jervis, for the enduring 
gratitude of the distant generations, whose health, com¬ 
fort, and safety will, ‘while grass grows and water runs/ 
continue to be promoted by the great work to which these 
gentlemen devoted such faithful and intelligent care.” 

Patty nodded: “Well, I’m sure I’m much obliged to them 
for making New York safe to live in. We can go back 
now, can’t we?” 

“Isn’t it beautiful up here?” he sighed, without much 
enthusiasm. 

“Yes, but the nights are bitter cold and the days are 
getting raw, and the leaves are nearly all gone. I’ve been 
here for years and the children have had all the diseases 


126 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


there are and got over them. They’re out of danger. Let’s 
go back, David.” 

When she called him by his first name it was like taking 
his heart in her soft fingers. He had no will to resist. 
Besides, the house had lost its integrity. It had played him 
false. It had permitted evil to prosper, and he had sacrificed 
his dignity and his revenge to conceal its shame. 

Nothing worse could happen in the big city than in the 
stealthy country. So he sighed again: 

“All right! let’s go back!” 

She sprang from her chair and kissed him and he took a 
poltroon delight in the syrup of her lips. She became amaz¬ 
ingly a girl again and assailed with a frenzy the tasks of 
packing up for the removal to town, the closing of the 
country home, and reopening of the house in St. John’s 
Park. 

She urged that she and Teen and Cuff should drive in and 
clean the house, air it out, get the new water pipes put in 
and—while they were at it, why not install gas? It was 
dangerous but so convenient! All you did was turn a key 
and set a match and there you were! And what about one 
of the new hot air furnaces to replace the odious stoves and 
fireplaces ? 

She laid plans for such fairy improvements with a spend¬ 
thrift enthusiasm and proposed that her husband should 
stay comfortably at home in the country with the two older 
children while she made the house ready. 

She was passionately domestic for the first time and when 
she offered as a final inducement to take her father and 
mother to town with her, RoBards could not deny her the 
toil or himself the repose. He wanted a few days of com¬ 
munion with the ideal he was resigning. He wanted to 
compose his soul anew for the new city life, the country 
good-by. 

The children, Immy and Keith, made a great to-do about 
their mother’s knees, clinging to her and begging her not to 
go. And the babe-in-arms, the miniature David, howled in 
trio, vaguely understanding that something ominous was 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 127 

afoot. Patty was the center of the battle. She held the 
infant under one arm while with her free hand she tried to 
clasp both Immy and Keith. Her voice was soft among the 
clamors, and she promised them everything if they would 
only be good for a few days while she made the home ready 
in the great city. 

She looked up at her husband and he could see the weird 
pride in her eyes. She, the frail, the pretty, the soulful, had 
been as an apple-branch that bore these buds to flower and 
fruit from within herself somehow. And they hated to let 
go, as perhaps the apple is reluctant to be tossed into space 
by the wind that rends the twig. 

RoBards had noted this cohesion in trees that were hard 
to fell and split. Some woods would almost welcome the 
teeth of the saw and the keen edge of the ax; they divided 
at a tap. But other trees fought the blade, twisted it and 
flung it off and made a strange noise of distress. And when 
the ax fell upon them they turned it aside, caught it in 
withes of fiber and tore it from the helve. 

Families were like that: some broke apart at the first 
shock; others clung together as if they were all interlaced, 
soul and sinew. He hoped that his household would be of 
this infrangibility. 

Patty diverted the children from their grief by loading 
them with tasks and warnings; the first was to take good 
care of Papa; the rest were to take care of themselves amid 
the infinite risks that make a jungle about children. 

She murmured to her husband: “Watch out for those 
Lasher children. That boy Jud has grown to a big hulking 
brute. He hangs about the place—wants to steal something. 
I suppose. Drive him off if you see him. And don’t let the 
children play with the Lashers. They come by in the road, 
and they’re—not nice at all.” 

She made the children promise to abstain from friendship 
with the Lashers and from numberless other adventures; 
and at last she broke from them and hurried to the carry-all. 
Cuff and Teen had gone ahead in the wagon with the 
luggage. RoBards helped Patty and the baby to the front 


128 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


seat and took his place beside her. Her father and mother 
were already bestowed in the back of the carriage. RoBards 
drove away, calling to the children that he would soon be 
home. 

He and Patty had little to say of either their secret prides 
or shames ; old age had its eyes upon their shoulder blades, 
and was perhaps subtly understanding from the glum wis¬ 
dom of experience that this young couple was gathering also 
much cargo that could never be thrown overboard and must 
always be hidden away in the deepest hold. 

The length of the journey to New York was wonderfully 
shortened now. RoBards put Patty and her parents and the 
servants on the stage and she had only to ride as far as 
Harlem, where she would take the New York and Harlem 
Railroad train. It had a steam engine and a double track 
clear to City Hall, and some day it was going to be extended 
to White Plains, and eventually perhaps to Chatham. 

When he had seen the stagecoach whirl off with Patty and 
had seen her handkerchief flaunt its last farewell through 
the dust, RoBards drove home. 

Or was it home now? Home seemed to be a something 
cloudlike trailing after his wife. Home was the immediate 
neighborhood of his love. 

His heart ached with anxiety for her. What if she should 
not arrive safely? The number of stagecoach accidents was 
astounding: drunken drivers, runaway horses, capsizings, 
collisions, kept up an endless succession of deaths and 
cripplings. 

Thinking of Patty as perhaps doomed already he thought 
of her with overwhelming tenderness. The very road back¬ 
ward was denuded of the aureole she lent it. It stretched 
dour and stark in the harsh outlines of autumn. The trees 
were stripped of leaves; the lanes of their soft borders. 
Everything was naked and harsh. The wind was ugly, 
cynical; it tormented the flocks of fallen leaves, sent them 
into panics of flight with hoarse little cries and scurries. 

This was no place for a rose like Patty. 

He rode past the home of the Lashers. It was always 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 129 

autumn there. However, the wild flowers of spring held 
picnics in the lanes and the weeds put on their Sunday 
calico; however the peach trees and the plums and cherries 
in their disordered companies broke forth into hosannas of 
bloom and pelted the yard and the house with petal confetti, 
this house and this fence always sagged and creaked; the 
shutters hung and flapped in the breeze; the family slumped, 
eternally exhausted from the sheer neglect of industry. 

None of the men was to be seen to-day; though the mother 
of the family, as always, hung over the washtub, bobbing 
up and down like a Judy on a string. She alone toiled, 
while the good-for-naught men dawdled and leered. They 
were as vicious as the filthy dogs that ran from the yard now 
and hurled themselves yelping at RoBards’ horses, trying 
to nip them while dodging their hooves. RoBards drove 
them off with whip and yell and the horses bolted. 

As he approached his own house at length, still fuming 
with anger at the Lashers and their dogs, he saw his boy 
running toward him along the road. He was shrieking: 
“Papa! papa! papa!” 

When Keith came up alongside the carry-all, he was 
gulping for breath, in such pain of fear and suffocation that 
he had to lean against the wheel a moment before he could 
speak. 

But his trembling hands pointed and his eyes were wild 
with fear as he gasped: 

“Papa!—bad man!—Immy!” 

“What? where? when?” 

“Just now—me and Immy play in the Tarn—big man 
comes—says to Immy—‘Hello, little girl!’ She don’t say 
anything. He comes up closeter. He reaches out. She 
cries—runs—he runs—grabs Immy. I run and pound him 
with my fists and he won’t let go. He kicked me into the 
Tarn. Yes, he did so! Then he runs away with Immy. 

“Who was it, do you know?” 

“Jud Lasher.” 

RoBards gave his horse a swift long slash with the whip 
and the carry-all went into the yard on two wheels. He 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


130 

flung the lines on the horses’ backs and, leaping across the 
wheel, ran madly past the house and up the shaggy hillside 
toward the place that he and Patty called “the Mystic Tarn.” 

The boy followed, stumbling, holding his hand to his side 
where the little heart thumped. His young eyes were aghast 
with the awe of a terror beyond his ken. 


CHAPTER XIX 


BACK of the house and above it on a hilltop too rocky 
for clearing, too rough for pasture even, was a little pool 
ringed around with huge boulders. No one could explain 
them, though the Indians had believed that they had been 
hurled in a battle of giants. 

Tall trees stood up among them and canopied the pool 
with such shadow that on the hottest days there was a chill 
there. 

RoBards had brought Patty hither on their first visit to 
Tuliptree Farm as bride and groom fugitive from the cholera 
plague. She had cried out in delight at the spookiness of 
the place and he had called it the Tarn of Mystery. He was 
not quite sure what a tarn might be but the word had a 
somber color that he liked. And Patty had shuddered de¬ 
liciously, rounding her eyes and her lips with a murmurous 
“ooh!” like a girl hearing a ghost story late at night. 

He had helped her to skip from rock to rock like an 
Alpine climber among glaciers, but when they came close 
to the pool glowing as an emerald of unimaginable weight, 
she had recoiled from it in disgust, because it seemed to her 
but a sheet of green scum. He explained to her that what 
revolted her was an almost solid field of drenched tiny 
leaves. But he could not persuade her to come near and 
admire. She hated the look of it, and when she saw a tiny 
water snake wriggling through it in pursuit of a frog, she 
fled in loathing. 

In the fall the leaves came down from the trees in slow 
spirals. They lay on the surface of the pool, which had not 
water enough to draw them into its plant-choked shallows. 
The sharpening winds swept them across the surface in 
little flocks. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


I3 2 

The children loved to play beside the Tarn, though Patty 
told them stories of Indians that had murdered and been 
murdered there. She whispered to RoBards that when she 
saw the Tarn it always hinted of suicide or assassination. 
The farmer, Mr. Albeson, laughed at this, but his wife, 
Abby—even the children called her Abby—said they was 
stories about the place. She had forgotten just what they 
was, but like as not they was dead bodies there. Folks 
enough had vanished during the Revolution, and maybe some 
of them was still laying out there waiting for Judgment Day 
to rouse them up. 

It was to this moody retreat that RoBards hurried now. 
He took one rail fence at a leap and landed running, like a 
hurdler. He stumbled and fell and was up again. Keith 
clambered after his father, crawled through the fence and 
over the rocks till he came where Immy lay bruised and 
stunned. Keith saw his father drop to his knees and lift 
the child, clench her to his breast, and shake his head over 
her, then raise his eyes to the sky and say something to God 
that the boy could not hear. 

The boy had always been reproached for tears and had 
been told, “You’re a big man now and big men don’t cry.” 
Yet he could see that his father was crying, crying like a 
little frightened girl. This strange thing twisted the boy’s 
heart and his features and he pushed forward to comfort his 
father. He was near enough to hear his sister moaning: 

“Papa—papa—I’m hurt—Immy’s hurt!” 

Before the boy could touch him, RoBards lowered Immy 
gently in the autumn leaves and put up his head and let out 
a strange sound like a wolf’s howl. 

Then he struggled to his feet, and ran here and there, 
looking, looking. He climbed one of the high boulders about 
the Tarn and stared this way and that; leaped down and 
vanished. 

Keith ran past Immy whimpering and struggled up the 
steep slab of the same boulder on all fours. Before he 
reached the top he could hear voices, his father’s in horrible 
anger, and another voice in terror. It was Jud Lasher’s 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


133 

voice and there was so much fear in it that Keith’s own 
heart froze. 

Sprawling at the peak of the boulder, he peered over, and 
there he saw his father beating and kicking and hurling Jud 
Lasher about on the sharp stones. He swung his fist like 
the scythe the farmer swung and slashed Jud’s head and 
swept him to the ground; then picked him up and raised him 
high in the air and hurled him flopping against a rock; and 
plunged down upon him. 

His father was like a mad dog that Keith had seen worry¬ 
ing a sheep once. The froth streeled from his mouth and his 
teeth were gnashing; he snarled like a mad dog. 

At last he shoved and knocked Jud over into the green 
pool, all misty now with dead weeds and brown fallen 
leaves. The pool was so shallow that Jud’s face was not 
covered and he threshed about, bawling, choking, begging 
for mercy. 

But RoBards knelt on him and twisted his face round and 
held it under the water. Keith hardly knew his father; the 
look on his face was so strange. 

The boy was so afraid of the great fear that filled the 
Tarn with a cold wind that he let go his grip on the rock 
and rolled and scuffled down the side of the boulder to the 
ground. 

His father heard him fall. Forgetting Jud Lasher, he 
ran to Keith. The boy cowered, expecting to be beaten, but 
when his father drew near, his face was so charged with 
tenderness that he was surely a different man. The boy 
wondered who it was that had just been destroying Jud 
Lasher. RoBards knelt by Keith and felt about him to see 
if any of his bones were broken, lifted him and set him on 
his feet, and said in a hoarse tone: 

“Run back to Immy and wait.” 

Keith started to return and was slipping through a narrow 
cleft between two boulders when he heard his father’s voice 
and turned. 

He saw Jud Lasher stumbling weakly from the pool on 
all fours. He was slimy and weedy as a green-brown snake. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


134 

But his face was white, washed clean with water and terror. 

When he sprawled at the edge of the pool and tried to 
rise, Keith saw his father move forward and set his foot on 
Jud’s hand; heard him say: 

“Listen! Can you hear me? Then listen hard! You’re 
dead by rights. I was killing you. I will kill you—if ever I 
see you again. Only one thing holds me back. It’s no pity 
for you. You’ve got no call to live. But people might learn 
about Immy if they found you dead. It would follow her 
all her life. But if you’ll get out of our sight forever, I’ll 
let you live. Go kill yourself somewhere—or run away— 
anywhere you please, so I never see you. For if I ever find 
you, by God, you’re dead! Do you hear ?” 

From the thing that cringed on the ground came a 
whine: 

“Ye-yessir, thanky, sir. But where could I go, mister? 
I can’t think very good. Where could I go? What’d I tell 
Ma?” 

There was a silence and Keith could feel in the tormented 
toss of his father’s head that it was hard for him to do the 
thinking for this dolt. But at last he muttered: 

“Tell your mother you’re going to sea—on a whaler— 
anything. My God, have I got to help you to get away 
from me?” 

Jud hung panting and slavering like a dog that had been 
run over by a heavy wagon and waited to be put out of its 
misery. RoBards spoke again at last: 

“Tell your mother you’re going to New Bedford and ship 
before the mast.” 

“Where’s New Bedford, mister? how’d a feller git there?” 

“I don’t know! What difference does it make how you 
get there—or where you go? The thing is to get away from 
this country. Haven’t you brains enough to run off and save 
your own life? Look here, do you know the way to Pough¬ 
keepsie ?” 

“Yessir; yessir; I been there.” 

“Well, there are whaling vessels there. Go there and ask 
them to take you. Tell your mother you’re going to sea.” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 135 

“She’ll cry awful hard. She always does when I talk 
about runnin’ away.” 

“Let her cry! She’ll cry harder if I kill you, won’t she? 
And I will if you let her keep your here! But don’t tell 
her why you’re going. Don’t tell her what happened here. 
Just get away—far—far! and never come back. Oh, you 
poor thickwitted toad! Oh, God, that such a beast should 
befoul such a flower! Oh, Immy, Immy! my baby! my 
little girl.” 

He fell against a tree and beat upon its harsh bark and 
wept, wagging his head and twisting his mouth like a boy’s, 
while the tears came pelting down. 

Keith dared not go to him. He felt that he ought not to 
spy on his father’s agony. As he slipped through the gap fh 
the rocks, his last backward glance showed him Jud Lasher 
scrambling weakly to his feet and shambling off into the 
thicket. 

Keith went to his sister where she lay among the trampled 
leaves. She was crying so softly and wearily that he was 
afraid to speak to her. 

He stood wondering what to do, until, by and by, his 
father came lurching up and dropped down to her side. Her 
voice rose at once to a loud wail: 

“Papa! bad, bad man—hurt Immy!” 

“Hush! hush, sweetness! Don’t tell—don’t tell! Promise 
papa you’ll never tell anybody about this—not anybody on 
earth.” 

“Not Mamma?” 

“No—never—never!” 

“Not Abby?” 

“Nobody on earth!” 

“God?” 

“He knows, honey.” 

“Why did God let that man-” 

“Hush, my baby. Don’t!” 

The torn and bruised child was hardly more baffled than 
her father. He picked her up and went on, as dazed as any 
little girl whose doll has been torn by a playful dog. 



136 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

Keith tagged after them, wondering. His father took 
note of him at last and paused to turn on the boy and say 
with pleading anxiety: 

“You’re not going to tell 

“No, papa, ’course not. Big men don’t tell things.” 

His father did not take comfort from this braggart wis¬ 
dom. He groaned: 

“That two little children should have such a secret to 
keep!” 

“Just what is the secret we’re to keep, papa ?” 

“Nothing!” 

“How can we keep it, then, papa!” 

“Never speak to anybody about Jud Lasher—never say 
his name—never think of it.” 

“All right, papa. I p’omise.” 

He could not speak the word, but he accepted the pledge. 

The top of the hill was almost as high as the crest of the 
big tulip tree, and as they descended to its level the tree 
seemed to grow upwards above them. 

Halfway down the rough slope, they saw Mrs. Albeson 
clambering toward them difficultly, fat as she was and short 
of breath and full of autumnal rheumatism. She sent her 
garrulous voice ahead of her: 

“What o’ mercy’s happened up there? What’s the voices 
I heard ? Sounded like murder bein’ done.” 

RoBards could not answer her in words. She glanced 
from his white face to the torn lamb he carried and she 
tried to thrust from her mind the hideous guess it made: 

“Not—not?—Aw, no!” 

“Hush!” said RoBards. And she knew. 

She wavered a moment and wanted to faint or die, but 
was not used to such comfortable escapes from reality. 
Revulsion shook her big frame; then her soul seemed to 
scold her for a cowardice. She raised her head and put out 
her arms, saying : 

“Gi’ me the pore little martyr.” 

And RoBards was glad to surrender to this big woman 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


137 

the tiny woman in whose invaded sanctity he felt himself all 
the more forbidden for being her father. 

His last word was: “You won’t speak of this to your 
husband—or anybody.” 

Abby gave him a look of reproach and drew the child 
into her own breast, smothering the little fainting wail: 
“Abby—big bad man-” 

“Hush!” said Abby. 

“Hush!” said the tulip tree, as always, and kept reiterat¬ 
ing its watchword at the window of the library where Ro- 
Bards sought the dark quiet and paced the floor, wringing 
his hands and beating back into his mouth the mad yelping 
atheisms that came up as vainly as the hayings of a hound 
against the imperturbable moon. 

He did not see his boy hiding among the young tulip 
trees about the children’s graves. There was a little hillock 
there and Keith could see into the library and see his father 
weaving to and fro like a caged fox. He wondered what it 
was all about. There was something terrible beyond the 
terrible fact that Jud Lasher had hurt Immy. But the mys¬ 
tery was impenetrable to his little mind. And his father 
would not tell him. 

Keith wanted to go to him and help him, but he knew 
that he wanted to be alone. Fathers did not call for little 
boys to help them at such times. 

It might have aided poor RoBards a little to feel that he 
himself was at just such a distance from his own heavenly 
Father, and He as helpless to explain. But that would not 
comport with any theology he understood. And he paced 
his cage. 



CHAPTER XX 


WHEN RoBards had cried out all the blasphemy in his 
heart he fell to praying for some divine miracle to undo the 
past, to erase the truth and turn it into a nightmare. But 
soon he was put into God’s place and proved himself as 
adamant to prayer. 

He had walked until he fell upon the old sofa. He rose 
from that, remembering that Harry Chalender had lain 
there when he was wounded. He went to a big chair and 
sank into it, a mere heap of weary bones and flaccid muscles. 

Then his eyes paced the room, walking along the shelves, 
reading the names of books: lawbooks, philosophies, fiction, 
poetry—all of them records of the vanity of human efforts 
to conquer the storms that swept spirit and flesh. Every 
title was a monument of defeat. 

To escape these reminders, his eyes went longingly to the 
window where they could release their vision like the raven 
set free upon the flooded world. 

He rose and leaned upon the casement and stared into 
the sky, and saw nothing but blue emptiness, the infinite idle 
azure, soulless, sorrowless, loveless, hateless, deaf, dumb, 
indifferent, without shame or mercy, morals or duties; the 
inverted ocean of the heavens, the topless pit where souls 
went hurtling when the earth flung them into its depths to 
drown in eternity, to emerge upon some inconceivable shore 
and crawl forward to the feet of judgment for everlasting 
doom or everlasting bliss. 

It was said that Eyes looked down from there and saw 
the sparrow fall, saw the least quirk of a finger, saw through 
the brain and watched the darkest thoughts that stole like 
thieves through the night of a mind. 

Yet the sparrow fell, or went soaring away in the claws 
138 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


139 

of the hawk; the little children died or lived to be trodden 
and gored and seared and crazed with fright. And the 
child’s cry for help was as unheard or unheeded as the 
sparrow’s. 

Rebellious thoughts stirred RoBards to mutiny. He was 
ready to defy heaven and denounce its indifferent tyranny, 
as Lucifer had done and the other angels. Better to be 
thrust over the jasper walls and to fall for seven days into 
hell than not to protest. 

And then he was himself put to the test of an appeal for 
his mercy. He heard a voice below him and glanced forth 
from his window as from a little heaven to a petitioner on 
earth. 

“Please, sir, could I have a word with you, if you please, 
sir.” 

As he looked down and with a kind of divinity under¬ 
stood beforehand just who was praying and what the prayer 
would be and that it would not be granted, he felt that God 
must find it hard at times to look into some of the wrinkled 
old faces that are upturned in desperate appeal, like shriveled 
flowers praying for rain. 

“I’m Mrs. Lasher, sir, of down the road a bit. You’re 
always passin’ our house. It’s not much to see and I’ve not 
had luck with my children, for all they’re so many; but to¬ 
day I—would you—could you r spare me a minute of your 
precious time, sir—could you ?” 

He was afraid to ask her in or to encourage her at all; for 
he dreaded his own weakness. He sat on the window sill 
and, abstaining from any temptation to courtesy, said: 

“Go on.” 

She took complete discouragement from his manner, and 
went into a panic, pursing her lips and doddering and mixing 
her fingers together in a silly restlessness as she spoke: 

“It’s about my son, Jud, sir. He says he’s goin’ to sea 
for a sailor.” 

“Why?” 

“His only reason is because you gave him the advice to 

go” 


140 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


“Well, why not?” 

“Oh, if it comes to that! He’s not much brains and he 
knows nothing of the ships. He is none too good here in this 
lonely place and what wouldn’t he be were he to mingle with 
sailors and the like? They must be terrible people from all 
I hear—and the danger, sir. They say they fall off masts 
and they go mad and jump in the sea and the sharks follow 
them and in the ports they get drunk and get killed and for 
the least thing they tie them to masts or whatever they are 
and whip their poor bare backs till the blood streams and 
they hit them with iron weights and—oh, from all they tell 
me it’s a hell’s own life, if you’ll excuse the saying. And at 
best my boy would be gone for maybe five years or more 
and we never hearing a word of how he is, or if he’s alive 
even. Oh, I couldn’t abear it, Mr. RoBards. I need Jud 
at home. He’s strong and helps me sometimes and when the 
strange tempers are not on him he’s as good a boy to his 
mother as ever boy was; and when the strange tempers are 
on him, he needs his mother more than I can tell you. 

“To-day now, he came home all bloody and battered like, 
and I misdoubt he was trespassin’ on your property, often 
as I’ve told him never to bother you. He said he fell out 
of a tree into your pond up there whilst he was robbin’ birds’ 
nests. I don’t believe him and it’s likely you had to thrash 
him. I see your knuckles is all scarred and I’m sorry for 
any trouble he gave you, and welcome you are to whip him 
whenever he annoys you, and the punishment is what he 
needs, but don’t send him away, Mister RoBards. 

“To-day I could wash his wounds and tie them up and 
put him to bed where his father won’t find him and whip 
him again. But oh, if he was at sea and was hurt or pun¬ 
ished, who would wash his wounds for him and tie them up 
and give him a little petting when he needs it? 

“He’s a lonely boy, sir. He’s like a haunted house some¬ 
times, full of ghosts and queer notions and—but I’m taking 
too much of your valuable time. I came over only to ask 
you, would you take back your advice and tell him not to 
go to sea, sir!—if you please, sir!” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


141 

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lasher, very sorry, but I can’t.” 

“Oh, but to send him away whalin’! Five years gone 
into the storms and the wickedness, with nobody to pray for 
him or give him a kind word. The wickedness of the 
sailors-” 

“There’s wickedness everywhere, Mrs. Lasher.” 

“But not up here where everything’s so clean and sweet 
and beautiful. There’s wickedness of course here in plenty, 
but it’s nothing to what the ships has on them. It’s as good 
as sending my boy to hell to send him to sea.” 

“I can’t help you. I’m sorry—very sorry.” 

Her wildly beseeching eyes fell before the sad sternness 
of his. She nodded meekly: 

“All right, sir. Thank you, sir. You know best, I sup¬ 
pose.” 

And with this Thy-will-be-done she accepted her fate. 
She was used to being denied her prayers. She turned and 
moved across the grass toward the gate. She paused once 
or twice to look back, as if hoping that he would relent. 
RoBards gazed at her with profound pity, but he could not 
grant her plea. Finding that he would not beckon her to 
return, Mrs. Lasher nodded, slipped through the gate, and 
moved on to what must be almost the funeral of her boy. 

She left RoBards in as much confusion as his benumbed 
spirit could feel. The reptile Jud had evidently told his 
mother only a part of the story. He had remembered enough 
to lie about the cause of his punishment. But how long 
could he be trusted to keep the rest concealed ? 

Who could keep a secret? Immy’s pitiful future was 
already at the mercy of her own babbling, of her little 
brother’s wondering, of the farmer’s wife who loved gossip, 
and of twist-wit Jud. 

RoBards was afraid even of his own power to keep it in¬ 
violate. Suppose he himself talked in his sleep and Patty 
heard him? Suppose that in one of his wild tempers, when 
wrath like a drunkenness made him eager to fling off all 
decencies and rave in insults, he should hurl this truth at 
Patty or someone else ? 



142 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


In many of the rocks on the farm the roots of trees had 
made little rifts and squeezed and squirmed and grown until 
they split granite asunder. What heart could withstand the 
relentless pressure, from the irresistible gimleting of a 
secret ? 

Once the truth was uttered, it could no more be recalled 
than the dead itself. It was cruelly easy in this world to do, 
to say, to think; and hideously impossible to undo, unsay, 
unthink. One could only add repentance and remorse to 
guilt or carelessness. 

Repentance and remorse were dangerous, too, to the soul, 
for one could repent a good deed, a mercy, an abstention 
as easily as evil. He found now in his conscience nothing 
but regret that he had let that filthy serpent crawl away. 
The copperhead had struck and he had merely bruised it and 
left it alive with all its venom, and the forked tongue and 
hissing of gossip. 

In this room he had sorely repented two deeds of pity: 
sparing Chalender’s life and Jud Lasher’s. What a poltroon 
thing pity was, after all! 

The next day he rode over to White Plains and found a 
letter from Patty among his mail. He read it on the way 
home, letting the reins lie in the mane of the horse while he 
conned the pages. They were dashed off in a mood of girl¬ 
ish hilarity. New York was a fountain of renewing youth 
to her. It had grown enormously, she said, since she left it 
a few months ago. The railroad journey was a sensational 
adventure. Like most of the other passengers, she had been 
fairly choked with smoke and riddled with cinders and one 
of them had stuck in her eye a long while. But New York 
with even half an eye was heaven. 

She hoped that he would come soon. She would have the 
house ready for him in a few days. St. John’s Park that 
had been way uptown when they moved in was already slip¬ 
ping downtown. It was mighty pretty, though, and the 
water when it came would make it a paradise of convenience. 
She reminded him to keep the children off the highway and 
away from those miserable Lashers. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


H3 

Her solemn edicts were as girlishly innocent as her gay- 
eties. It made bitter reading, that warning—that ex post 
facto warning—against the Lashers. Whatever happened 
she must never know this blighting truth. 

In a few days Immy was playing in the yard again. She 
seemed to have forgotten her experience as she forgot the 
nightmares that sometimes woke her screaming from sleep. 
But now and then she would cast upon her father a look of 
amazement. In her games with Keith she shrieked more 
easily in a wilder alarm. Her shrieks stabbed RoBards and 
made him dread that the experience had worked some per¬ 
manent injury in the fabric of the child’s soul. 

All the ignorance that had been wrapped about her youth 
for her protection was gone now. The blindfold had been 
snatched from her eyes. The questions that she had been 
rebuked for asking, were brutally answered and yet left 
unanswered. The beauty, the mystery, the holiness oif 
innocence had been torn like the rent veil in the temple, and 
only the uglier knowledge vouchsafed. 

And a stain had been cast upon her indelibly. She would 
be regarded with pity and yet with horror forever. She was 
branded with all the curses of abominable sin, though she 
had had no choice, no share, no understanding of it. 

And such things could happen in a world where the fall of 
a sparrow was marked—marked but not prevented! 

Immy must at all costs be sheltered from any further 
hazards. It seemed unwise to take her to the city, where 
dangers thronged everywhere, and pollution increased 
hourly. But when he hinted that it might be better not to 
go to town for the procession, Immy almost went into a 
convulsion of protest. She pleaded that she had a special 
right to see the parade because she had been so badly hurt. 

RoBards granted the prayer to silence the argument. He 
wondered if Jud Lasher had left yet, but dared not ask. 
When he rode past the hut, he put spurs to his horse lest 
the mother accost him again, but his sidelong glances never 
caught a glimpse of Jud. 

He did not know that the wretch had lain abed for days 


144 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


while his bruises mended and that when he was up again 
and saw RoBards in the road, he ran and hid, stealing out 
again to shake his fist at the vanishing figure and gibber 
new threats. 

At length the parade day drew near. Mr. and Mrs. Albe- 
son decided to go in the farm wagon drawn by their own 
team. Mrs. Albeson would not risk her bones in the steam 
railroad and she quenched her husband’s enthusiasm for an 
experimental ride on the devil-wagons. She cooked a din¬ 
ner and a supper for RoBards and the children and set the 
table for them and drove off. 

RoBards had promised the children a ride on the steam- 
cars and planned to leave the house the next morning. 
After the Albesons had clattered away, he went to his 
library to select such books as he might want in town dur¬ 
ing the winter. He walked now and then to the window to 
watch the children playing on the lawn. 

As he stood there once he caught sight, of a lone pedes¬ 
trian, a hulking youth who carried his belongings in a bag 
hung on a stick slung across his shoulder. He recognized 
Jud Lasher—evidently on his way to sea. 

Without telling them why, RoBards called the children 
indoors. They scampered about his feet for a while, then 
their game led them gradually into the hall. There they 
played hide and seek, with long silences broken by loud out¬ 
cries and a racket of running and laughter. 

After a vague period he woke from a reverie like a deep 
sleep and realized that he had not heard their voices for a 
long time. He called; there was no answer. He cried their 
names up the stairway. A sense of some uncanny horror 
set his heart athrob. He went back to the library window 
puzzled, calling. 

Then he caught sight of Keith standing chubbily against a 
huge tulip tree with his hands over his eyes. He was count¬ 
ing loudly. RoBards smiled at the solemnity of the ever¬ 
lasting game of hide-and-seek—grown-ups and infants hid¬ 
ing their eyes and hiding themselves and making a sport of 
what should be a serious business. 




WITHIN THESE WALLS 


145 

He looked about for Immy, expecting to see her crouch¬ 
ing behind a crimson rambler’s trellis or some other con¬ 
cealment. He heard a faint cry, so faint and far away that 
it might have been a distant bird. His gaze darted here and 
there. A moving figure caught his eye on a hillside. He 
saw that it was Jud Lasher, and that he was running toward 
a thicket on a ledge of rocks. In his arms he held some¬ 
thing that struggled. RoBards knitted his brows and shaded 
his eyes to peer into the glare of the afternoon sun. He 
heard again that delicate call. It sounded like Immy’s voice; 
it frightened him. 

He pushed through the window and dropped to the lawn. 
He saw his horse grazing near; saddled, the reins trailing 
along the ground. RoBards ran to him, caught him as he 
whirled to bolt, threw the reins back over his neck, set 
foot in stirrup and rose to the saddle. 

As the horse reared, RoBards struck him between the 
ears with his fist to bring him down, then sent him flying 
to the gate. He turned him into the main road and the 
horse, catching terror and rage from his rider, beat the dust 
into a rolling cloud. 

At the point where he had seen Jud running, RoBards 
jerked the bridle and, setting the horse to the low stone wall, 
lifted him over before he had time to refuse. Up the 
hill RoBards kept him on the run. He caught sight of Jud 
Lasher as Jud Lasher caught sight of him. Only a little 
way the fugitive went before he flung Immy down like a 
bundle, and darted into a chaos of rocks and thistles and of 
tall sycamores holding out naked branches livid with leprous 
white patches. 

RoBards did not pause by Immy’s side but rode on, his 
heels beating a tattoo on the horse’s ribs. 

Jud Lasher was mad with fright, but terror made him as 
agile as a weasel. He slipped easily through mazes that the 
horse must blunder over or around. 

RoBards was so intent upon him that he did not see a 
heavy sycamore bough thrust right across his path until it 
swept him from the saddle. But he kept clutch on the reins, 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


146 

dragged the horse’s head round and brought him to earth. 

RoBards was up and in the saddle before the horse could 
rise. He charged on up the hill and overtaking Jud Lasher 
in a clearing, rode him down. The youth fell begging for 
mercy, but when the horse swerved to avoid him RoBards 
lifted his head so sharply that he went up beating the air 
with his forehoofs. Then he came down with them upon 
the prostrate body like a great two-tined pitchfork. 

Keith who had stood watching his father’s pursuit from 
a long distance hid his head in his arm. Immy watching 
from where she lay, covered her eyes with her hands. They 
saw their father slip from the saddle and disappear behind 
a shelving boulder. There was a brief hubbub, then silence. 

After a long time of awful emptiness, their father came 
down the hillside leading the horse. 

He went to Immy and lifted her in his arms, and kissing 
her, mumbling: 

‘Hid he scare you?” 

She nodded, almost more afraid of her father than of 
Jud. 

“He won’t scare you again. He’s gone now.” 

“Far?” 

“Far.” 

“I’m glad! I was hiding behind the big rose bush and 
he grabbed me like a big bear would; and he runned off 
with me. I’m glad he’s gone.” 

She laughed, but her father set his palm across her mouth 
quickly and hugged her to his heart so hard that she cried 
out. 

He made her promise that she would say nothing also of 
this and when she asked him why Jud wouldn’t let her 
alone, he said: 

“He will now. But if you tell anybody he will come back 
for you.” 

He scanned the landscape, but nobody was to be seen ex¬ 
cept little Keith waiting in a daze. 

He took the two children into the house and once more 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 147 

solemnly pledged them never to mention the name of Jud 
Lasher, or the efforts he had made to steal Immy. 

When supper time came RoBards waited on the two chil¬ 
dren, but did not eat. 

He put them early to bed, and heard their prayers, and 
waited till he was assured they were sound asleep. They 
felt his kisses upon their brows as they sank away into 
oblivion. 


CHAPTER XXI 


It was black when Keith woke suddenly. Some little 
sound had pierced the depths of his profound immersion 
in sleep. He imagined Indians or Cowboys or Skinners. 
His ears seemed to rise like a terrier’s; his skin bristled with 
attention. He wondered if thieves were about; or lions or 
tigers or any of the witches or hobgoblins that peopled the 
night. 

It was the good old custom to invoke all manner of 
demons for the discipline of children. Good children never 
asked questions or never delayed to sleep. Bad children 
were watched not only by an unsleeping God of remarkable 
vindictiveness but by swarms of demons, child-eating ani¬ 
mals, ogres that made ginger-bread of babies, or so-called 
saints who broiled them on live coals in a kitchen called 
hell. It was a hard world for children here and hereafter. 

The nightmares that attended waking hours were horrify¬ 
ing, but at night alone upstairs, with the dark smothering 
and blinding the wide eyes that could see little and imagine 
much, and the room a very lair of shapeless monsters that 
could see without being seen, it was the supreme torment. 
Even to cry aloud to nurse for help or a bit of light was to 
incur an added punishment. To run wildly out of the cavern 
and seek shelter in parental arms was to incur ridicule and 
often to shock strange guests and bring shame upon father 
and mother. V 

Even grown-up people lost their senses when they were 
awake in the dark and made spooks and ghosts of dark 
chairs and tables, heard groans and clanking chains in the 
night-wind noises and the creaking of restless timbers. 

RoBards as a child had run the gauntlet of such agonies. 
He tried to save his children from them, but in vain. The 

148 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


149 

lonely babies concocted fiends of their own, and nurses, 
impatient to be free of their importunities, added traditional 
atrocities. 

RoBards had caught one or two of the # nurses at the 
ancient game and discharged them, only to be looked upon 
as a meddler. He had threatened the dusky Teen with a 
return to slavery if she did not try to disabuse the children’s 
minds of savagery. But she believed too much herself to be 
relied upon to inculcate atheism. 

Keith was a brave little knight, however, and an investi¬ 
gator by instinct. Instinctively he pitted his inborn skepticism 
against the tyrannies of imagination, and when he could not 
exorcise a fiend by denying it, he met it with bravery. His 
bedroom was a little Thermopylae and he Leonidas fighting 
the swarming hosts. 

Sometimes he surrendered and buried his head under the 
pillow. Sometimes he put them all to ignominious flight. 
He had an ally of mystic powers who now and then gave 
unconscious aid: an old crack-voiced rooster, a tenor who had 
seen better days, who dreamed aloud at midnight of his 
former glories and snored a sleepy cock-a-doodle-doo long 
before the young beaux started their morning fanfare. 

This old rooster’s drowsy utterances always reminded 
Keith that dawn would come again and the sun with its 
long broom of light would sweep the room clear of its 
child-hating mobs. The blessed sun would explain the 
panther about to spring as an old rocking chair, the broom- 
straddling witch at the window as a tulip tree bough, the 
pirate with uplifted cutlass as a pile of clothes. 

Keith loved realism. He was educating himself in the 
night school to disbelieve the dark, to rely upon hard 
facts and distrust his terrifying fancies. A dawning scientist 
"was evolving so fast that each week covered an aeon of 
human experience. 

Besides, he had an explorer’s curiosity, a soldier’s curiosity, 
a willingness to bet his safety against any mystery that 
threatened or nagged him. 

He had put to flight no end of Indians, Skinners, and 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


150 

bogies by simply pointing his forefinger at them, snapping 
his trigger-thumb and observing, “Bang! bang!” 

To-night he quaked only a few minutes before he realized 
that whatever the menace was it was downstairs. His first 
theory was that Jud Lasher might be stealing back to make 
another attempt to carry Immy away. The why of Jud’s 
persistence baffled him—as well it might. His best guess 
was that Jud wanted to take Immy with him on the whaling 
ship that his father had commanded him to join. 

This thought substituted anger for terror. Keith’s little 
heart plunged with resentment and he slipped out of bed. 
The first sweat of fear chilled as he stood barefoot on the 
creaking floor. Then, like a child ghost in his long white 
nightshirt, he stole from his room to the hall. He peered 
into Immy’s room and saw that she was asleep in safety. 
He padded stealthily to his father’s room and, lifting the 
latch as silently as he could, swung back the door. He was 
stunned to find the room empty, the bed unoccupied, the 
covers still smooth and taut. 

His father might be at work in the library. He peered 
over the banisters, but the library door was open and no 
light yellowed the hall carpet as he had so often seen it 
when he had wakened on other occasions and made adventur¬ 
ous forays about the house in search of a drink or reinforce¬ 
ments against the armies in his room. 

Sometimes he had dared to steal down into the pantry 
and loot the cooky-jar. The thought of the pantry embold¬ 
ened him now. He descended the stairway slowly with 
the awe of an Orpheus in Hades. 

The moon poured down on the front of the house; and, 
streaming through the glass in the front door, carpeted 
the lower hall with a swaying pattern of moon-dappled 
tree-shadows. Keith felt as if he waded a little brook 
of light as he flitted here and there. The sound continued, 
but always from below. 

He went at last to the cellar door. This house boasted 
to all passers-by that its builders had not placed the cellar 
out in the yard but had tucked it under the ground floor. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


151 

There were two doors to the cellar, one in the kitchen, 
one on the outside of the house. 

Keith was interested to find a little glow of light on the 
kitchen floor, seeping in from the cellar. He listened and 
heard someone moving about, heard a mystifying chipping 
noise, such as the stone-cutters had made when they put 
the new marble hearthstone in place and when they had 
recently enlarged the cellar and strengthened the foundation 
with a course or two of stone. The cellar walls were eleven 
feet thick in places. 

They were made, Mr. Albeson said, “in the good old days 
when builders were honest and houses were solid—none 
of your modern flimsies.” 

Keith had spent much time there on the cellar stairs 
watching the masons and asking questions. He had learned 
much of the chemistry of mortar and the dangers of quick¬ 
lime. He had seen it smoke like milk on fire. He had 
been told that if he fell in it he would disappear, be just 
eaten up bones and all. 

What could be going on down there now? Masons did 
not work at night. A burglar would hardly try to cut his 
way through stone foundations when the windows were 
usually left unlocked. 

Keith reached up and putting his fat hand on the thumb- 
latch pressed it down with all the gentleness he could com¬ 
mand. Not a sound did he make, and the door came open 
silently. But a damp draught enveloped him and icy water 
seemed to flow round his ankles. 

With the wind that poured up the stairs came a stream 
of light, and an increase of sound. He leaned through the 
door and stared down. 

He saw his father in rough old clothes splotched with 
white. He looked like a mason and he was dragging from 
the thick wall of the chimney a big stone. On the cellar 
floor were many others ragged with old mortar. In the 
chimney was a big hole and his father was making it 
bigger. 

Keith’s darting eyes made out a long box of white lime 


152 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

fuming and simmering with a long something half buried 
in it. 

He watched his father in a stupor of bewilderment while 
he cleared a sort of oven in the wall. He had never seen 
such a look on his father’s face. At length he took the 
lamp and set it in another place, and bent to draw that 
something from the quicklime box. 

As he hoisted it awkwardly out of the shadow into the 
light, Keith saw that it was Jud Lasher. 

He seemed to be asleep, for he hung all limp in white 
clothes and he made no sound. 

Keith saw his father carry the gaunt, gangling form to 
the chimney and stuff it into the hollow. It would not fit, 
and he began frantically thrusting at the arms and legs to 
crowd them in. The head rolled across the edge and Keith 
caught sight of the face. 

Jud was not asleep! He was- 

The boy pitched forward; slid and thudded down the 
cellar stairs head first. 

He fell and fell. The next thing he knew was the feel 
of his bed about him. His head was on his pillow. The 
covers tucked under his chin. 

His head was swimming and there was a big throbbing 
lump on his forehead. As he put his hand to its ache, his 
eyes made out a tall figure standing by him. 

“That you, Papa?” 

“Yes, Keith.” 

“Papa! what happened?” 

“You must have had a dream, honey.” 

“But my head hurts.” 

“I heard you scream and I found you on the floor.” 

“In my room?” 

“Yes.” 

“That’s funny! I thought I fell down the cellar stairs.” 

“That would be funny!” 

“I thought I saw you in the cellar.” 

“What would I be doing in the cellar?” 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


153 


“You were—papa, where’s Jud Lasher?” 

“He’s gone to sea, hasn’t he?” 

“Will he come back? Ever?” 

“Not unless you talk about him. He might if you do.” 

“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.” 

“There are ghosts and ghosts. Foolish people talk about 
the imaginary ones. The real ones—big men don’t talk 
about them at all, and you’re getting to be a big man, aren’t 
you?” 

“Yes, papa; yes, sir.” 

He was dizzy. He swung like a blown rag on a clothes¬ 
line—or like a sailor on a—a whaler. A sailor on a whaler. 

The old rooster snored. His father’s hands came out 
across the ocean and drew the covers over the sailor’s hands. 
He—he was—was- 

It was morning. 

It takes girls a long while to dress, and Keith was always 
downstairs long before Immy. This morning he was quicker 
than ever. He wanted to get to that cellar and see it by 
daylight. 

He met his father in the hall, pacing up and down. His 
father looked at him queerly as if he were afraid. That 
was a silly thing to think, of course, but his father looked 
sick—as if he hadn’t slept well or any at all. 

The boy thought it best to be frank. 

“Papa, was that a dream? All of it?” 

“Was what a dream?” 

“About me being in the cellar and seeing you taking 
stones out of the wall.” 

“Let’s go down and look at the cellar.” 

Keith loved that. When in doubt, visit the scene of the 
legend. 

He went down the steps. The morning light came in 
through little windows smeared with cobwebs. 

Keith missed first the heap of stones on the floor, the 
hole in the foundation of the chimney, the box of quicklime. 
The stones were in place. There was no hole in the wall, 



154 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

no quicklime. The cellar floor was clean—cleaner than 
usual. 

“I guess it was a dream, papa.” 

He took his father’s hand. The hand felt funny, gritty 
and clammy, as if it had been washed very hard. He glanced 
down and the nails were white along the edges. 

He said nothing as they started upstairs, but his backward 
look noted a thing he thought he ought to speak of: 

“Papa, the stones in the chimney look like they’d been 
chiseled out and put back in again with fresh mortar.” 

“Do they?” his father gasped, and sat down hard on the 
cellar steps. He nodded and groaned wearily. 

“They do look that way.” 

He thought a while, then rose and took an old broom and 
jabbed it into spider webs on the windows and whisked them 
away and spread them across the fresh lines. 

“Does that look better?” 

“If you could get the spiders to move there it would.” 

Now the boy felt that he was made an accomplice. His 
father took his criticism and acted on it. 

It was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened 
to the boy. He was saving his father from some mistake. 
The greatest lawyer in the world was taking Keith’s advice. 
He groaned with delight and hugged his father’s arm, mur¬ 
muring : 

“We’re like pardners-” 

“Partners we are.” 

“I’m a big man now at last. Couldn’t you let me know 
ever’thing, so’s I could help you when you needed me?” 

His father gazed at him devotedly and kissed him. He 
did not like that kissing business. Big men did not indulge in 
such girls’ play. Still he remembered the story of Nelson’s 
death in the sea battle and how the fearless admiral’s last 
words were a plea to another officer to kiss him. 

But in spite of this burst of affection his father would 
not explain the Lasher mystery; he said the boy was too 
young to know. Yet he was not too young to tell enough 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


155 

to let other grown-up people know. RoBards, haggard with 
loss of sleep and the storms he had barely weathered, was 
frantic to prevent the children from publishing the devastat¬ 
ing news. 

Curiosity would work in them like a yeast and the in¬ 
stinct to ask questions could only be overcome by some over¬ 
whelming injunction. 

He led Keith to the library and fetched out the vast 
family Bible, and set the boy’s little hand on it and said: 

“Swear that you will never mention Jud Lasher’s name 
to anybody, or breathe a word of what he did or what I 
did to him. Do you swear?” 

“Yes, papa, I swear, and I p’omise-” 

“Do you know what happens to people who break their 
oaths ?” 

“Oh, yessir, they burn in hell-fire forever and ever, amen.” 

His father paid the boy a noble homage when he made 
the appeal to his chivalry above his fear: 

“Worse than that, it would mean that if you told, your 
little sister would be shamed before everybody as long as 
she lived. Everybody would think of her as if she were 
worse than wicked; nobody would ever marry her. She 
would be afraid to be seen anywhere. She would cry all 
the time and never smile.” 

“That would be worse’n me burning in hell. Oh, yessir, I 
won’t tell, sir.” 

“This promise won’t wear out in a few days or months, 
will it? This house will be yours when I am gone. It 
must never be sold; never fie torn down till I am dead and 
gone. After Immy dies it won’t matter so much. Does your 
poor little brain understand all this?” 

His accurate soul answered: “I don’t understand it, no 
sir; but you do, and what you want is enough for me. I 
wish you would trust me.” 

“I do. And one last word: don’t tell Immy what I’ve 
told you. Don’t let her talk about it. And always remem¬ 
ber that the least word you let slip might mean that the 



156 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

policemen would come and take me away and hang me be¬ 
fore all the people.” 

The boy screamed at that and was hardly soothed back 
to calm. 





“swear that you will never mention jud lasher’s name 

TO ANYBODY” 






















CHAPTER XXII 


R.OBARDS was afraid to leave the house. How could he 
trust it to keep the secret ? There would be nobody to guard 
the cellar from intrusion. Yet no intruder would be in¬ 
terested in studying the stone walls. Anyone who entered 
the house would seek jewelry or silver or clothes. 

He dared not ask the children to deny themselves the 
visit to the city. They were already nagging him to make 
haste lest they be too late for the parade. 

So he locked the house up and drove away. When he 
cast his last glance back he sent a prayer in his eyes to the 
house to be good to him and to protect him and its other 
children. 

The tulip tree stood at attention, solemn and reliable. 

He approached the Lasher hovel with dread and tried to 
make the horses gallop past, but Mrs. Lasher stood in the 
middle of the road and held up her arms. 

He had to face her, and he checked his horses while his 
heart plunged and galloped. But all she said was: 

“I just wanted to tell you that Jud left home yesterday 
to go to sea. It broke my heart, but I hope you’re satisfied.” 

RoBards took reassurance from the irony of this taunt, 
sorry as he felt for the poor, life-beaten woman before him. 
He nodded and touched his hat, and she stepped aside to 
let him pass. 

He could only hope that she would not visit the house 
in his absence. He caught a quick look from Keith’s eyes— 
a look of proud complicity. During the long drive the boy’s 
hand kept stealing round his arm and patting it encourag¬ 
ingly. 

They reached the railroad station just in time. The cars 
were so crowded that it was hard to squeeze aboard. It 

i57 


158 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

seemed that the whole countryside was drained of its 
populace. 

Everybody was bound for New York. Everybody had on 
his best or hers. The day was glorious and the world in a 
holiday mood. Many of the people carried baskets of food. 
The silliest joke brought guffaws of success and idiotic 
repartee. 

RoBards was hailed by clients and other acquaintances: 
“Here’s lawyer RoBards!” “How air ye, Jedge?” “Well, 
we put up a good fight, but I guess it was a good thing we 
got licked.” “That’s right; you never know your luck.” 
“Bigger N’ York grows, the better it’ll be for all of us.” 
“They’ll want plenty o’ butter ’n’ eggs down to the setty. 
We got water enough to dieloot the melk and then spare some 
for the pore town rats.” 

The engine whistled. Everybody jumped. The bell rang. 
Everybody cheered. The locomotive puffed and strained 
and jerked and the carriages began to move. 

Keith leaned far out of the window while his father held 
his heels. He saw the engine rolling round a curve with a 
brave choo-choo. Immy was content to wonder at the people, 
their funny hats and gay clothes. But Keith wanted to know 
how the engine ran without horses. His father had such 
a hard time explaining the modern miracle, that Keith offered 
to bet they had a couple of horses hidden in the old engine 
somewhere. 

It was appalling how fast they went. The landscape was 
a blur. “The horses are running away!” Keith yelled and 
then came in yowling, bringing an eyeful of coal dust. It 
was hard to get him to open his eyes till the grime was washed 
out. RoBards found an allegory in that: how human it 
was to clench the eyes and the heart tight upon what hurt 
them most; how hard it was to persuade people to let go 
what they could not endure. 

The carriages rocked and threatened to capsize. Women 
squealed and baskets came tumbling down from the racks. 
An umbrella almost transfixed the hat of one fluttering 
farm-wife. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 159 

Everybody agreed that the steam locomotive was the 
devil’s own invention—something unchristian about it; folks 
would soon go back to horses like God meant them to. 
No wonder some God-fearing souls had risen to forbid the 
use of the schoolhouse for meetings in the interest of this 
contraption of Beelzebub. 

But in an incredibly short time the train was running 
among streets. They were in New York already and the 
city was decorated “like as if they was a weddin’ in every 
last house.” 

* Loops of bunting and marvelous clevernesses of flag ar¬ 
rangement bedecked all the homes, and throngs were hasten¬ 
ing south to the heart of the city and the grandest parade of 
modern times. 

One pitiful, forlorn little old woman was seemingly the 
only human being left behind to guard Westchester County 
till its populace returned from the excursion to New York 
City. Westchester had presented the metropolis with one 
of its rivers, and it went down to make the bestowal formal. 

Mrs. Lasher had not the money nor the time for such a 
journey. Water to her was the odious stuff she lugged 
from the well to the washtub or the stove. New York meant 
scarce more to her than Bombay or Hong-Kong. She hardly 
lifted her eyes from her toil to note who passed her hovel 
or in which direction. Yet she had watched for RoBards 
and had run out to taunt him with his cruelty to her. 

And now she was multiplied in his eyes into an endless 
procession of visions more terrible to him than an army 
with banners, more numerous than the parading hosts that 
poured along the streets of New York. 

While the bands thumped and brayed and the horses’ 
hoofs crackled on the cobblestones, and the soldiers and 
firemen and temperance folk strutted, he seemed to see only 
that little despondent hag wringing her work-tanned fingers 
over the loss of her good-for-nothing son. She was bitter 
against RoBards for sending the lout away to be a sailor. 
What would she have said if she had known—what would 
she say when she learned as learn she surely must—that 



160 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

RoBards had saved her boy from the perils of the seven 
seas by immuring him in the foundation walls of his home ? 

The Russians had been wont to build a living virgin into 
the walls they wished to sanctify. He had sacrificed a lad 
and he was doomed to stand guard over the altar. He was 
as much a prisoner as the dead Jud—chained to a corpse. 

It terrified him to think that the half-crazed old mother 
had the franchise of Tuliptree Farm for this day, since 
there was never a soul left on the place to prevent her wan¬ 
dering about. What if she chose the opportunity to visit 
the home where she had never been invited to call? Just 
to see how her betters lived, she might climb in at a window 
and wander about the rooms. He saw her in his fancy 
gasping at the simple things that would be splendor to her 
pauper’s eye. 

What if the blood of her son should cry aloud to her like 
Abel’s from the ground, and draw her to the cellar? What 
if she should see through the clumsy disguise of spiderwebs 
and begin tearing at the foundation stones with those old 
hen’s-claw fingers of hers? 

It was a ridiculous image to be afraid of, but RoBards 
could not banish it. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE children had apparently forgotten all about the 
tragedy. The newness of the train-ride, the fear of missing 
something, of being late somewhere, of not being every¬ 
where at once, kept their little minds so avid that there was 
no thought of yesterday. 

They entered the city as if they were wading into the 
boisterous surf at Rockaway Beach. The crowds broke 
about them with a din of breakers thundering shoreward. 
Yet they were not afraid. 

When they descended from the train at the station, Ro- 
Bards could hardly keep them in leash long enough to get 
them into a hack. As it bounced across the town to St. 
John’s Park, he had only their backs and heels for company. 
Each child hung across a door and stared at the hurrying 
mobs. 

At length they reached the home and all their thoughts 
were forward. Nothing that had ever happened in the 
country could pit itself against the revelry of the city. 

Their young and pretty mother looked never so New 
Yorkish as when she ran down the front stoop to welcome 
them. When she cried the old watchword, “How have you 
been ?” they answered heedlessly, “All right!” Immy, of all 
people, answered, “All right!” 

Even RoBards forgot for the brief paradise of embracing 
his gracious wife that everything was all wrong. She had 
to take him about the house and show him the improve¬ 
ments she had made, especially the faucet in the kitchen 
for the Croton water when it should come gurgling through 
the pipes. From a parlor window she pointed with delicious 
snobbery to the hydrant at the edge of the front porch. 
Most marvelous of all was a shower-bath that she had had 

161 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


162 

installed upstairs. It would be possible to bathe every day f 
There was something irreligious and Persian about the 
apparatus, but RoBards rejoiced for a moment in the 
thought of what musical refreshment it would afford him on 
hot mornings after long nights of work. 

The children were so impatient to get them gone that 
they had hardly a glance to spare at the new toys, the faucets 
and hydrants, the municipal playthings which would prevent 
fires in the future or at least make the life of a fireman a 
pastime instead of a vain slavery. 

Patty’s mother had been caught in the new craze for 
‘‘Temperance” and she called the Croton water as much of a 
godsend as the floods that gushed out from the rock that 
Moses smote. Since the city had removed the old pumps 
there had been no place for a man to quench his thirst ex¬ 
cept by going to a grocery store and asking for a cup of 
water as a charity. Few people had the courage to beg for 
water, so they either went dry or paid for a glass of brandy. 
This, she said, had kept up the evil of drunkenness that was 
undermining the health and character of so many men and 
women. Once the pure Croton water was accessible and 
free, intoxication would cease. 

But old man Jessamine, himself a child now, belittled the 
significance of the Croton day. It would be nothing, he 
said, to the great day when the Erie Canal was opened 
and the first boat from the lakes started its voyage through 
the canal to the Hudson and down the river to the sea. 
He held the frantic children fast while he talked ancient 
history: described the marvelous speed of the news. 

“The very identical moment the first drop of Erie water 
entered the canal at Buffalo, a cannon was fired. Eight 
miles away stood another cannon and the minute that can¬ 
noneer heard the first shot, he fired the second cannon. 
Eight miles away was another, and so on all the way to 
Sandy Hook. For more than five hundred miles the cannon 
were lined up eight miles apart and it took only an hour and 
twenty minutes for the news to reach New York, and then 
they sent the news back to Buffalo the same way; and so 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 163 

it took less than three hours to send a message more than 
a thousand miles. Wasn’t that wonderful?” 

The children wriggled impatiently and said, “Please, gram- 
pa, the bands are playing. We’d better hurry.” 

The old man held them tighter and went on 

“When the canal boats reached New York there was a 
grand procession of ships, and there were two elegant kegs 
of Erie water with gold hoops and Governor Clinton emptied 
one of them into the ocean to marry the sea to the lakes; 
and another man poured in phials of water from the Elbe, 
the Rhine, the Rhone, and all the rivers and seas. And the 
land parade, you should have seen that! All the societies, 
had wagons: the Hatters’ Society with men making hats 
before your very eyes; the Rope-makers with a ropewalk in 
operation; the comb-makers, the cordwainers, the printers 
printing an ode. To-day will be nothing to what people 
did when I was young, for in those days-” 

But the children had broken away from his sharp knees 
and his fat stomach and his mildewed legends. The band 
outside was irresistible, and their father was waiting to say 
good-by to them. 

Keith was mighty proud of his father in his fireman’s 
uniform. But when RoBards seized Immy, tossed her aloft 
and brought her down to the level of his lips, she was as 
wildly afraid as Hector’s child had been of him in his great 
helmet. Immy was easily frightened now. Her scream 
pierced the air, and she almost had a fit, squirming in her 
father’s arms and kicking him in the breast as he turned her 
over to Patty, who received her, wondering like another 
Andromache. 

“What’s the matter? what on earth?” Patty cried. And 
Immy sobbed: 

“I thought Papa was Jud Lasher.” 

“What a funny thought! Why should you-” 

Patty’s father called to her opportunely, demanding with 
senile querulousness, who had hidden his walking stick and 
where. RoBards forgave the old man much for playing 
providence this once. 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


164 

As Patty turned aside, Keith seized Immy’s foot and 
warned her to “keep still for heavem’s sakes.” She under¬ 
stood ; her eyes widened and she pleaded with her father to 
forgive her. He was as afraid of her penitence as of her 
terror; but somehow in the flurry of leaving the house, Patty 
forgot her curiosity, and the incident passed over. 

The loyalty of Keith and his quick rally to his father’s 
protection from Immy’s indiscretion touched RoBards deeply. 
The boy had evidenty inherited the family love of secrecy 
for the family’s sake. 

But RoBards was sick with fear, realizing on what slender 
threads the secret hung. He dreaded to leave the children 
with their mother, lest they let slip some new clue to the 
agony he loved Patty too well to share with her. But he 
had to take his place with his fire company, though the sky 
fell in his absence. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


That procession was seven miles long, and everyone 
who marched or rode, and each of the massed spectators 
had his or her terror of life at the back of the heart. But 
RoBards knew only his own anxiety. 

The Fire Kings had left their engine house by the time 
he reached the place and he had to search for them in the 
welter of humanity. The Battery was the point from which 
the parade was to start and every street within two miles 
of it was filled with men and horses and mobs of impatient 
people already footsore with standing about on the sharp 
cobblestones. 

At last the serpent began to move its glittering head. 
The Grand Marshal, General Hopkins, set forth with a 
retinue of generals and aids, guards and riflemen. The 
horse artillery and various guard regiments followed with 
seven brass bands. The second division under Major Gen¬ 
eral Stryker consisted of the Governor and his staff, the 
state artillery, State Fencibles and cadets, councilmen from 
various cities, foreign consuls, and members of the Society 
of the Cincinnati, escorting the water commissioners and en¬ 
gineers, all in barouches. The third division included officers 
of the army and navy and militia, “reverend the clergy,” 
judges, lawyers, professors, and students; the chamber of 
commerce and the board of trade. The firemen made up 
the fourth division. Four other divisions tailed after. 

It seemed that there could be nobody left to watch when 
so many marched. But the walks and windows, porches and 
roofs were a living plaster of heads and bodies. New York 
had more than doubled its numbers since the Erie Canal 
festival and had now nearly three hundred and fifty thousand 
souls within its bounds, as well as thousands on thousands of 
visitors. 


165 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


166 

It gave RoBards’ heart another twinge to stand an ob¬ 
scure member of a fire-gang and watch Harry Chalender go 
by in a carriage as one of the victorious engineers. 

RoBards had fought him and his ambitions and must- 
haul on a rope now like a harnessed Roman captive, while 
his victor triumphed past him in a chariot, or, worse, a 
barouche. 

Life had defeated RoBards again and again. With the 
loftiest motives he had been always the loser, and he could 
not understand things. Chalender was a flippant fencer with 
life; yet somehow he fought always on the winning side 
and the worthier side. His mortal offense had been con¬ 
doned, outlawed, and the offended ones helped to .conceal his 
guilt. 

It was bitter for an earnest man like RoBards to go 
afoot after such a rake as Chalender. Why should he have 
killed and hidden Jud Lasher in a wall, and let Harry Chal¬ 
ender, who had been as evil, ride by in state showered with 
the cheers due a hero, a savior of New York? 

RoBards would never cease to shudder lest it be found 
out that he had spared Chalender; and he would never cease 
to shudder lest it be found out that he had punished Jud 
Lasher. A jury would probably acquit him for killing 
Lasher, but only if he exculpated himself by publishing the 
disaster that had befallen Immy. If he had killed Chalender 
and published his wife’s frailty, a jury would have acquitted 
him for that, too. But why should it have befallen him to 
be compelled to such decisions and such secrecies ? 

Now his wife, holding his daughter in her lap, would 
wave salutations to Chalender, and remember—what would 
she remember? And would she blush with remorse or with 
recollected ecstasy? RoBards turned so scarlet at the 
thought that when the Fire Kings halted for a moment, one 
of his companions told him he looked queer and offered him 
a nip at his hip-flask of brandy. 

RoBards said it was the heat, and then the command to 
march resounded along the line. The Fire Kings resumed 
the long trudge round Bowling Green up Broadway all the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


167 

distance to Union Park, round the Park and down the 
Bowery, through Grand Street and East Broadway and 
Chatham to City Hall Park, where they were to form on the 
surrounding sidewalks during the exercises. 

The fire division was led by a band of music from the 
Neptune Hose Company of Philadelphia. Engines and 
hose carts from there and other cities followed, all smothered 
in flowers and ribbons. The New York Fire Department 
was preceded by its banner, borne on a richly carpeted stage 
drawn by four white horses elegantly caparisoned, each steed 
led by a black groom in Turkish dress. 

That banner was a masterwork. On one side widows 
and orphans blessed the Fire Department for its protection, 
while a “hero of the flames” attended them. Neptune tow¬ 
ered above them, “evidently delighted with the victory he 
had accomplished over his ancient enemy, the Demon of Fire, 
by the aid of his skillful and intrepid allies, the firemen of 
New York.” 

On the other side of the banner was the Queen of Cities 
pointing to the Croton Dam. The banner of mazarine blue, 
with crimson and amber fringe, tassels, and cord, was sur¬ 
mounted by a carved wood trumpet and helmet, ladder and 
trumpet, and an eagle with extended wings. 

Hundreds of firemen followed in glazed caps, red flannel 
shirts, and pantaloons of various colors. The devices were 
wonderful, a scene from the tragedy of Metamora, a scene 
from Romeo and Juliet, a phoenix, many phoenices, Neptunes 
galore, burning churches, a mother rescuing a child from an 
eagle’s nest, an Indian maid parting from her lover, Liberties, 
sea-horses, tritons, Hebes, the Battle of Bunker Hill, Cupids, 
mottoes like “From our vigilance you derive safety,” “Duty, 
though in peril,” “We come to conquer and to save,” “In¬ 
dustry and perseverance overcome every obstacle,” “Com¬ 
bined to do good and not to injure,” “Semper paratus,” “We 
are pledged to abstain from all intoxicating drinks.” 

Among the fascinating objects carried in procession were 
the Bible on which George Washington had taken the first 
presidential oath; the printing press used by Benjamin 


168 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


Franklin in London, and a modern press, for contrast, strik¬ 
ing off an ode written for the occasion; a foundry; a group 
of millers up to their eyes in meal as they ground corn and 
bagged it; sections of Croton water pipe of every dimension 
with examples of all the tools; a display of gold and silver- 
warejof several thousand dollars’ value. 

The Temperance Societies attracted especial attention. 
They included gray-haired men, boys, mothers and daughters, 
and numerous reformed drunkards. Their banners were 
inspiring. The Bakers’ Temperance Benevolent Society car¬ 
ried a banner showing on one side all the horrors of intem¬ 
perance, “the lightning destroying the false light that has 
already enticed the ship of the Inebriate to his destruction; 
the moderate drinker coming on under easy sail, just enter¬ 
ing the sea of trouble; the first glass making its appearance 
on the horizon; a figure representing beastly intoxication, 
another just throwing off the shackles of intemperance; the 
Anchor of Hope firmly planted in the Rock of Safety with 
the pledge of total abstinence for its cable extending across 
the abyss of destruction and winding through the land. 
On the other side, the Genius of Temperance offered the 
Staff of Life and the Cup of Health; the Temple of Science 
and Wisdom divided the picture with Peace, Commerce, Me¬ 
chanics, and Agriculture flanking. A smaller banner showed 
the interior of a Bake House with the Temperate Bakers 
cheerfully performing their work.” 

Other banners were even more comprehensive. 

The procession moved along with the usual open and 
shut effect. There would come an abrupt halt with every¬ 
body in a jumble. Then a quick start-off and a lengthening 
gap that must be closed on the run. It was annoying, weari¬ 
some, and soon began to seem foolish. Why should one half 
of the town wear its feet off marching past the other half of 
the town whose feet were asleep with the long sitting still ? 

By a stroke of luck, the Fire Kings made a long pause near 
the residence on Broadway where Patty and her two 
families, old and young, had been invited to watch the parade. 
RoBards was as confused as a silly child when his son Keith 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


169 

recognized him and advertised him with loud yells of “Papa!” 
He and Immy then came bolting to the curb, followed by 
Patty. 

People stared and made comments on the amazing thing 
that a man’s wife should violate decorum with such public 
friendliness. It was as bad manners as greeting a friend 
cordially on a Sunday. 

Patty edged close to her husband and said—as if she 
knew it would help him on his journey: 

“Did you see how fat Harry Chalender is getting? He 
looked like an idiot sitting up there while a man of your 
ability walks. It’s simply disgusting!” 

Oh, mystic comfort of contempt—the lean man’s for the 
fat; the fat man’s for the lean; the failure’s for the con¬ 
queror! By the alchemy of sympathy, RoBards’ anger was 
dissipated by finding its duplicate in his wife’s heart. He 
smiled at her earnestness in a matter that had but lately 
driven him frantic. It is thus that men prove women 
excitable. 

Then the bands ahead and abaft struck up at the same 
time but not with the same tune and he had to move on, 
his mind and his feet trying in vain to adapt themselves to 
both rackets. 

It was two o’clock before the advanced guard of Wash¬ 
ington Grays galloped up in front of the City Hall. It was 
half past four when the last man had passed in review, 
and Samuel Stevens, Esq., president of the Board of Water 
Commissioners, began his address. 

He cried: “The works of Rome were built by soldiers 
and by slaves. Ours was voted for by freemen, was con¬ 
structed by freemen—and we make the aspiration that in 
all ages to come it may bless freemen, and freemen only!” 

The president of the Croton Aqueduct Board followed, 
saying: “The obstacles have disappeared! The hill has 
been leveled or pierced, the stream and the valley have been 
overleaped, the rock has been smitten! Nature, yielding 
to human industry, perseverance, and skill, no longer with¬ 
holds the boon she had before denied us. A river, whose 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


170 

pure waters are gathered from the lakes of the mountain- 
range, arrested and diverted in its course, after pouring 
its tribute through a permanent and spacious archway for 
more than forty miles, at length reaches our magnificent 
reservoirs, from whence it is conducted by subterranean 
conduits, extending one hundred and thirty additional miles, 
throughout the greatest portion of our city.” 

When he had finished, the ladies and gentlemen of the 
Sacred Music Society sang the ode which General George 
P. Morris had written at the request of the Corporation 
of the City of New York: 

“Gushing from this living fountain, 

Music pours a falling strain, 

As the Goddess of the Mountain 

Comes with all her sparkling train. . . . 

“Gently o'er the rippling water, 

In her coral-shallop bright, 

Glides the rock-king’s dove-eyed daughter, 

Deck’d in robes of virgin white. . . . 

“Water leaps as if delighted 

While the conquered foes retire! 

Pale Contagion flies affrighted 
With the baffled demon, Fire! . . . 

“Round the Aqueducts of story, 

As the mists of Lethe throng, 

Croton’s waves in all their glory 
Troop in melody along.” 

From his post on the sidewalk RoBards could hear 
snatches of the speeches, bursts of song. He joined in the 
“nine hearty cheers for the City of New York and per¬ 
petuity to the Croton Water” when the Grand Marshal 
called for them. 

Then the ceremonies were over and a cold collation was 
served in the City Hall, with Croton water and lemonade, 
but no wine or spirituous liquors. Patty sent the children 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


171 

home with her parents and joined her husband at the feast. 

Mayor Morris offered a toast to the Governor and he 
responded, remarking that New York “but yesterday a dusty 
trading mart,” had now “the pure mountain stream gushing 
through its streets and sparkling in its squares. To the 
noble rivers with which it was encircled by Nature, is now 
added the limpid stream brought hither by Art, until in the 
words of the Roman poet, alike descriptive and prophetic, her 
citizens exult, 

“inter flumina nota 
Et fontes sacros.” 

The night was as brilliant as the day. All the places of 
public amusement were crowded and at the Tabernacle a 
sacred concert was given. The fair at Niblo’s was suffocat¬ 
ingly frequented, and the fireworks were splendid. At Castle 
Garden there were fireworks and a balloon ascension. The 
museums and hotels were brilliantly illuminated; and at the 
Astor House seven hundred window lights were hung. 

The Common Council caused a silver medal to be struck 
in commemoration of the occasion, showing on one side 
the reservoir on Murray’s Hill, on the other a cross-section 
of the aqueduct. It would savor of boasting, perhaps, to 
aver that this medal was the ugliest in the history of 
medalurgy. 

Better than all the fireworks of oratory or powder, more 
blithe than all the brass music, the roar of cannon and the 
rattle of firearms, the bunting and the glitter, was the sudden 
outburst of the fountains. The water that had come running 
down from the Croton dam leaped into the air and fell with 
a resounding uproar. It reveled in the light and bloomed 
in gigantic blossoms whose frothy shapes hardly changed, 
though the drops that made them were never for a moment 
the same, but always a new throng that rushed up and lapsed 
with a constant splashing and bubbling. 

In the City Hall Park the Croton flung itself sixty feet 
in the air and came back diamonds. Eighteen jets were so 
arranged that they designed various figures, “The Maid of 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


172 

the Mist,” “The Croton Plume,” “The Dome.” In Union 
Park there was a willow that wept gleaming stars. In Har¬ 
lem there was a geyser more than a hundred feet tall. And 
the sunlight thrust rainbows in among the silvery columns. 
At night colored fireworks made them uncanny with glamor. 

The people felt that the curses of thirst and plague and 
fire were indeed banished forever. Time would blight this 
hope as it upsets all other reckonings upon perfection, but 
for the moment hope announced the millennium and every¬ 
body believed her. 

By midnight the town was as weary as a boys’ school 
after a holiday. When Patty and her husband reached 
home they found Keith awake and waiting for them. Immy 
was asleep, her head enarmed like a bird’s head curled under 
its wing. But Keith was staring from his cot. His little 
eight-year-old head was athrob with gigantic plans that made 
doorknobs of his eyes. 

“Papa, I been thinkin’. You know when I was little I 
was going to be the man who lights the street lamps; an’ ’en 
I was goin’ to be a night watchman when I got grown up; 
an’ ’en I was goin’ to be a lawyer like you are, and help you. 
But now I guess I’ll be a nengineer an’ build waterworks an’ 
aqueducks an’ things like that—like Uncle Harry did the 
Croton. And some day they’ll have a percession for me, too. 
You just wait and see.” 

There was no need for restraint of the laughter with which 
oldsters mock youngsters’ dreams. That fatal reference to 
Chalender wrung the lips of Patty and her husband with 
sardonic misery. They had once been innocent, too, and 
they were still innocent in ambition. It was life that made 
fun of them. What sport would it make of their children ? 


CHAPTER XXV 


The next morning RoBards was awake very betimes, 
driven from needed sleep by an onslaught of terrors. A 
thousand little fiends assailed him and bound him like Gulliver 
held fast with threads. RoBards would never take anxiety 
lying down, but rose and fought it. So now he broke the 
withes of remorse and prophetic frenzy and met the future 
with defiance. 

He took up the morning paper to make sure that yester¬ 
day’s pageant had actually occurred. He glanced hastily 
through the pages first to see if his own history had tran¬ 
spired. He half expected to read some clamorous announce¬ 
ment of a mysterious body found in an old house in West¬ 
chester near Robbin’s Mills. 

There was no mention of such a discovery, and he read 
of the immortal yesterday, “the most numerous and impos¬ 
ing procession ever seen in any American city.” 

The town had apparently solved its chief problem. His 
own had just been posed. How long could he hope to escape 
discovery? Perhaps the news was already out. Perhaps the 
jaded revelers returning to Westchester had been met by 
Mrs. Lasher screaming like a fury. Perhaps the house had 
caught fire and the cellar walls had broken open with the 
heat and the collapse of the timbers, as he had seen big 
warehouses during the Great Fire broken open like crushed 
hickory nuts. 

An unendurable need to make sure with his own eyes of 
the state of affairs goaded him to action. He ran upstairs 
to tell Patty some lie about the necessity for the trip. She 
was so heavenly asleep that he could not break the spell. 
The children were asleep, too. 

So he told Cuff to tell them that he had been called back 
to the country. 


i73 


174 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

He had the luck to meet a cab and the driver had a good 
horse that reached the City Hall Station of the New York 
and Harlem Railroad just in time to catch a train North. 

As the carriages rolled through Center and Broome 
Streets and up the Bowery and on out through the mile-long 
cut and the quarter-mile tunnel through solid basalt, RoBards 
blessed the men that invented steam-engines, and the good 
souls who borrowed the money and paid the good toilers to 
lay these rails of stout wood with iron bands along the top. 
He blessed the men who ran that blessed locomotive. A 
demon of haste inspired them and they reached at times a 
rate well over twenty miles an hour. He covered the four¬ 
teen miles to Williamsbridge in no time at all compared 
to stage speed; and the fare was but a shilling! He had now 
only eighteen miles to make by the old-fashioned means. 

He was a little cruel to the horse he hired and spared 
the poor hack neither uphill nor down. But then he was 
fiercelier lashed by his own torment. 

At last his home swung into view—benign, serene, secure. 
No lightning, no fire, no storm had ripped open its walls. 
There was no excitement visible except in the fluttering of 
of a few birds—or were they belated leaves? The tulip 
tree stood up, awake, erect, the safe trustee of the home. 

When he passed the Lasher place, he was afraid to go fast 
lest his guilt be implied in his haste. He let the galled jade 
jog. He even turned and looked the Lasher hovel straight 
in the face. As the guilty do, he stared it right in the eyes. 

But Mrs. Lasher did not even turn to look at him. She 
was splitting wood and her bony fleshless arms seemed to give 
the ax three helves. Her head was simply an old sunbonnet. 
She was faceless, blind and deaf to everything but work— 
an old woodpecker of a woman hammering at a life that was 
hard and harsh. Yet it was not quite satisfying to have her 
so stupid. It was not pleasant to remember that Jud him¬ 
self was notoriously worthless. 

Strange, that to assassinate a Caesar or a Henry of 
Navarre, to put a Socrates to the hemlock, was of a certain 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


175 

cruel nobility, but to annihilate an imbecile infamous! It 
was like stepping on a toad in the dark. 

And this modern theory, that the insane and the criminal 
and the witless were poor sick people to be sorry for, was 
disturbing. Once the abnormal people had been accused 
of selling themselves to devils, renting their bodies to hellish 
tenants, earning an everlasting home in hell. But now it 
was the fashion to say that they were poor souls whom fate 
had given only broken or incomplete machines to work with, 
and that their punishment was a crime. 

If it were true, then he had beaten to death a sick boy 
whose fearful deed had been the fumbling of a dolt. Even 
if it were untrue, he had sent a wicked youth to hell and Jud 
would now be frying and shrieking somewhere under Ro¬ 
Bards’ feet. 

RoBards fell into such abysmal brooding that he did not 
notice how the horse, a stranger to these roads, had turned 
into a lane and was no longer advancing but browsing on 
autumnal fare, nibbling with prehensile lip at an old rail. 
The horse himself was an imbecile of his kind. 

For a long while RoBards struggled with black thoughts, 
each more dreadful than the other. He was like a man held 
at the bottom of the sea by a slimy devilfish, with searing 
poison and cold fire in the very touch of each writhing, 
enveloping arm. 

He tore himself loose from all the arms at once with 
a wild resolve, like an outcry: 

“I’ll not think about it any longer! I’ll go mad if I do!” 

He heard his own voice clattering across the fields, woke, 
looked about, and felt lost before he realized that he was 
in one of his own meadows. 

He turned and backed the gig, and reached the highway 
again. The farmer, Albeson, was waiting for him, laughing: 

“I seen you leave that old fool of a horse go his own 
sweet way, so I knowed you was fig’erin’ out some old 
law-soot or other. I was wonderin' haow long you’d set 
there. Wall, it was a gre’t day yes’day, wa’n’t it?” 

RoBards could laugh with the farmer heartily, for it 


176 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

showed how innocent his reverie looked to a witness; it 
showed that Albeson had not discovered anything amiss about 
the home. 

He breathed elixir in the air and drove on to the house, 
finding it as always a mirror to his humor. It had been in 
turn an ancestral temple, a refuge from plague, a nuptial 
bower, a shelter for intrigue, a whited sepulcher. The tree 
had been a priest, a hypocrite, and now a faithful sentinel. 

He was brought down again when Mrs. Albeson met him 
with a query: “How's pore little Immy?” 

She whispered, though there was no one else in the house. 

“Mis' Lasher has been takin’ on terrible along of her boy 
Jud lightin’ out for sea. Pity you let him live, for they do 
say a man what’s borned to be hung won’t never git 
drownded.” 

This was an exquisite plight: to be blamed for sparing 
the life he had already taken. But he dared not give the 
noisy woman more of his confidence. Immy’s fate was 
enough in her power. 

He dared not visit the cellar till the farmers had gone to 
bed, and then he went down into it as into a grave. It was 
morbidly cold and the lamp shivered in his hand. 

He found everything as he had left it, and marveled at 
the neatness of his work. Yet it seemed not to be his work, 
but the work of somebody who had borrowed his frame and 
used his scholarship for cunning purposes. 

He went back to the library. In this room his soul had 
found its world. But now it was an impossible place. The 
hearthstone there—Chalender had brought it—it was a head¬ 
stone over a buried honor. He had often resolved to tear 
it out and break it to dust. But now it covered Jud Lasher, 
and served him as an anonymous memorial. 

What was the quicklime doing down inside there? His 
heart stopped. Perhaps it would not work sealed away 
from the air. He ought to open the walls and see. 

And this set him to trembling in utter confusion, for he 
recognized in his own bewilderment the unintelligent maudlin 
reasoning of the criminal. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


177 

Already he had revisited the scene; already debated an 
exhumation; already longed to talk to someone, to boast 
perhaps. 

He was afraid to trust himself to the house, and, making 
an excuse of having come for some books and papers, set 
off again for the city. 

When he got down from the cab in front of his home he 
found Keith in the bit of front yard. The boy was so ab¬ 
sorbed in his task that he greeted his father absently, as if 
RoBards were the child and he the old one. He had dug 
a shallow channel from the hydrant to the iron railing, 
and was laying down pipes of tin and cardboard and any 
other rubbish he could find. 

“I’m buildin’ an aqueduck from our house to London,” 
he explained. “London got burned down once and so the 
king has sent for me to get him some water right away, 
so’s the folks won’t get burned up again. They’re goin’ 
to give me a big immense parade and I’m goin’ to ride in a 
gold barouche like Uncle Harry did.” 

RoBards managed a wry smite and went in. Patty met 
him with an ancient look of woe and motioned him into the 
drawing room. She spoke in a voice like ashes stirred with 
a cold wind. 

“Immy told me,” she began and dropped into a chair 
sobbing. “She didn’t mean to, but she screamed again at 
nothing and let slip a word or two, and I got it out of her. 
She has cried herself sick with remorse at disobeying you. 
How could you let that monster live? How could you?” 

“He’s dead,” RoBards sighed, and sank on an ottoman, 
crushed with weariness. 

But Patty was startled to new life. She demanded the 
whole truth, and he told her in a dreary, matter-of-fact 
tone. He told her everything, including the secret of Jud’s 
resting place. 

The story came from him with the anguish of dragging 
a sharp chicken bone from his throat. It cut and left a 
bleeding and an ache, but it was wonderful to be free of it. 

Patty listened with awe, wide-eyed and panting. There 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


178 

was such need of being close together under the ruins of 
their life, that, since he could not find strength to lift his 
head or a hand, she leaned forward toward him till she fell 
on her knees to the floor and agonized across the space be¬ 
tween them and, creeping close into his bosom, drew his 
arms about her, and wept and wept—with him. 

Their only words were “oh!” and “oh!” eternally re¬ 
peated, yet they felt that only now were their souls made 
one in a marriage of grief. They had no bodies; they were 
mere souls crushed under the broken temple of their hopes, 
bruised and wounded and pinioned together in their despair. 

Yet there was a kind of pitiful happiness in groping and 
finding each other thus, and a bitter ecstasy in being able to 
love and be loved utterly at last. 



CHAPTER XXVI 


THEREAFTER Patty and RoBards felt a need of keep¬ 
ing close. They slept together after that, her throat across 
his left arm. She called it “my arm,” and when his travels 
to distant courts took him away from her, that arm of “hers” 
was lonely. 

Like galls that torment old trees for a while but grow at 
last into their structures, the secrets that began as cancers 
became a part of the hard gnarled bark that people and 
trees acquire or perish. The RoBards home was being held 
together by misfortunes as much as affection. The long¬ 
ing for utterance that makes secrets dangerous was satisfied 
by common possession. Patty and her husband knew the 
worst of each other, and their children, and they made league 
against the world’s curiosity. 

She was insatiably curious about the secrets of other 
homes while protecting her own, but this was hardly so 
much from malice as from a longing to feel that other 
people had as much to conceal as she. 

The children had talked the thing over with their parents 
and the strain was taken from their minds. Immy less often 
slashed the silence with those shrieks of hers. She and Keith 
were busy growing up and playing in the toyshop of new 
experiences. 

RoBards tried lawsuits with fair success, and his fees 
were liberal; he often secured fifty dollars for a case re¬ 
quiring no more than two or three days in court. His house 
rent was six hundred dollars a year, and his office rent and 
clerical expenses took another five hundred. This left 
enough to give Patty and the children all the necessary com¬ 
forts, including two hired women, though most of these were 
ignorant, impudent, and brief of stay, even though their 

179 


i8o 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


wages had gradually trebled until some of them were de¬ 
manding as high as two dollars a week. 

While RoBards practiced the law, Patty visited the shops 
and the gossip marts, went to church, and indulged in modest 
extravagances of finance, scandal, and faith. 

The baby grew and another came, and went; but Patty 
never became quite matronly. She took fierce care of her 
figure, lacing herself to the verge of suffocation and trying 
all the complexion waters advertised. 

Patty was the very weather-vane of the fashion-winds. 
She was not one of the increasing class of women who boldly 
invaded the realms of literature and politics; her battle¬ 
field was amusement. She was one of those of whom a 
writer in the New York Review said: “The quiet of do¬ 
mestic life has been lost in this stirring age; nothing will 
satisfy but action, notoriety, and distinction.” 

Like all the other women, who could (or could not) afford 
it, Patty dressed in the brightest of colors and flaunted 
coquetry in her fabrics. Visitors from overseas commented 
on the embarrassments they had encountered from mistak¬ 
ing the most respectable American wives for courtesans 
because of their gaudy street dress, their excessive powder, 
their false hair, and their freedom from escort. 

The chief cross in her life and her husband’s was the 
burden of her parents’ company. They were not interested 
in modern heresies and manners, found them disgusting. 
Patty was bored to frenzy by their tales of the good old 
times of their memory. 

The old man grew increasingly impatient of the law’s de¬ 
lay. He had less and less time to spend on earth, and that 
two hundred thousand dollars the city owed him grew more 
and more important. 

It seemed impossible, however, to speed the courts. One 
or two similar suits against the city on account of buildings 
similarly blown up to check the fire of 1835 were won by 
the city, and RoBards dreaded the outcome of his father-in- 
law’s claim. He dreaded the loss of the vast sum at stake 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 181 

even less than the effect of the loss on Mr. Jessamine’s 
sanity. 

The fire had died out and its ravages were overbuilt for 
ten years before the case drew up to the head of the docket 
at last. As Mr. Jessamine grew more and more frantic, he 
felt less and less confident of his son-in-law’s ability to win 
the action. He insisted upon the hiring of additional coun¬ 
sel and cruelly wounded RoBards by his frank mistrust. But 
he could not make up his mind what lawyer to employ, and 
since he was out of funds, he must depend on his son-in-law 
to advance the fee for his own humiliation. 

Patty herself was zealous for the splendor that two hun¬ 
dred thousand dollars would add to the establishment which 
she found all too plain in spite of her husband’s indulgence. 
And she shamed him woefully by her lack of confidence. 
She saw his hurt and added exquisiteness to it by con¬ 
stantly saying: 

“Of course, I think my Mist’ RoBards is the finest lawyer 
in the world, but can the judges be relied on to appreciate 
you ?” 

Lying on his arm she would waken him from slumbers 
just begun by crooning: 

“Two hundred thousand dollars! Think of it! Papa 
and Mamma are too old to spend it, so we should have the 
benefit. I’d buy you a yacht so that you could join the new 
club, and I’d buy myself—what wouldn’t I buy myself!” 

“First catch your cash, my dear,” RoBards would mumble, 
and try in vain to drown himself in a pool of sleep that 
would not accept him, though Patty sank away to blissful 
depths of oblivion. 

One hot July New York daybreak had just begun to annoy 
his unrested eyes when the fire bells broke out. He had 
promised himself and Patty long ago to resign from his 
company, but a sense of civic duty had kept him in the 
ranks. 

Patty slept so well among her visions of wealth that she 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


182 

did not heed when he withdrew his arm from under her 
head, nor hear him getting into his uniform. 

Remembering the icy December night of the disaster of 
1835, he rejoiced in the absence of wind and the plentitude 
of the Croton water. Neptune would soon prevail over his 
enemy element, as in the banners of the parade. 

The Fire Kings, who had been frost-nipped on that other 
night, were dripping with sweat this morning when they drew 
near the origin of the fire in a New Street warehouse. This 
contained a great mass of stored saltpeter, and it exploded 
just as the Fire Kings coupled up their hose. The world 
rocked about them. Buildings went over as if an earth¬ 
quake had rattled the island. The glass of a thousand win¬ 
dows rang and snapped and the air rained blocks of granite, 
timbers and chimneys. 

Two of the Fire Kings were struck dead at RoBards' 
side, and he was bruised and knocked down. The whole 
fire army was put to rout and the flames bounding in all direc¬ 
tions were soon devouring a hundred and fifty buildings 
at once, most of them new structures that had risen in the 
ashes of 1835. 

Once more the fear of doom fell upon the city, but after 
three hundred and sixty-five of the city's most important 
buildings were piled in embers, the Croton came to the 
rescue. 

Once more the heart of the city's commerce was eaten 
out. Again the insurance companies went bankrupt in the 
hour they had assumed to provide against. Once more 
financial dismay shook the stout frame of the town. 

Yet carpenters and masons were at work before the ruins 
ceased to smoke, though they had to wear gloves to protect 
them from brick and stone too hot to be touched with naked 
hands. 

When RoBards came home after the fire, Patty was still 
blessedly asleep. She woke with a little cry of. petulance 
when his helmet fell from his bruised hand as he lifted 
it from his bleeding forehead and dropped sickly into a chair. 
But when she saw how hurt he was, she was at his side in an 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


183 

instant, hurrying like a slipperless Oceanid to comfort him. 
The battered hero’s wounds were made worth while when 
they brought the delicate ministrations of the barefoot nymph 
in the flying white gown, so thin that it seemed to blush 
wherever it touched the flesh beneath. Patty looked all the 
bonnier for the panic that left her nightcap askew upon the 
array of curl papers bordering her anxious brow. 

And the fire had another benefit. It brought to old Jessa¬ 
mine the first grin of genuine contentment RoBards had 
seen on his twisted lips since 1835. For the old wretch 
chuckled to realize that many a wealthy merchant whose 
carriage dust he had had to take afoot for ten years was now 
brought down to his own miserable level. 

If only he could drag his two hundred thousand out of 
the city, he that had been poor among the rich, would be 
rich among the poor. That would be repayment with usury. 

He could hardly endure to await the day when he should 
regain his glory, and he smothered Patty when she brought 
home the inspiration that promised to hasten his triumph. 

She brought it home from a party, from a dinner so 
fashionable that it was not begun until seven o’clock. In 
only a few years the correct hour had been shoved further 
and further down the day from three o’clock in the aft¬ 
ernoon until deep into the evening. At the same time the 
fashionable residence district had pushed out into the country 
until it was necessary for the RoBards’ hired carriage to 
travel for this occasion out Hudson Street for two miles to 
Ninth Avenue and nearly a mile more to Twenty-eighth 
Street. And Patty laughed into his ear: 

“It’s nice to be bound for the North Pole on so hot a 
night.” 

She was blissful as a new queen in her peculiarly lustrous 
dress of peach-blossom silk. 

RoBards marveled at the perverse heroism with which she 
and other women endured these martyrdoms to vanity. 
He had ridiculed Patty’s devotion to tight stays for years, 
with the usual effect of male counsel on female conduct. 
She was not likely to yield to a husband’s satires, since her 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


184 

sex had mocked at similar opinion since the beginning of 
the world. Preachers had denounced corsets in vain; the 
word was not considered decent, but a man may say any¬ 
thing across a pulpit. Physicians had uttered warnings in 
private and public. They had traced all the evils of modern 
infirmity to corsets; but their patients groaned and per¬ 
severed. Anatomists described the distorted livers and 
lungs of ladies they found in post-mortems —in vain. 

King Joseph II. had forbidden stays in orphan schools and 
convents and had put them on female convicts, in the hope 
of diminishing their prestige, but the women went their 
sweet way with secret laughter. 

When RoBards quoted the parsons against the corsets, 
Patty answered: 

“If God didn’t want women to wear corsets, why did he 
fill the seas with whales and fill the whales with whalebone ? 
What else is it good for ?” 

Heaven was an appellate court that RoBards did not prac¬ 
tice in, and he dropped the case. 

To-night he had watched Patty devoting half an hour of 
anguish to the throttling of her waist. She slept in “night 
stays” now to make the daytime constriction easier, but the 
new peach blossom silk had demanded too much—or too 
little. 

After three efforts to pull the strings to the necessary tight¬ 
ness, she had sunk into a chair, bathed in sweat, pleading 
for help. And RoBards was so sorry for her that he ac¬ 
tually put his strength to the infamous task of lacing his 
own wife into an impossible cone. But she thanked him 
for the torture and pirouetted before her mirror in rapture. 

And now in the carriage, though she could hardly sit up 
straight, she was so happy that RoBards, delighting in any¬ 
thing that could delight her, leaned near to press his lips 
against her cheek. 

She was the mother of a long family, yet she was still 
a girl, and a girl by virtue—or by vice—of avoiding the 
penalties of growing up. Her extravagances, her flippancies, 
her very determination to evade the burdens of grief and 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


185 

responsibility, her refusal to be in earnest about anything 
but beauty, were, after all, the only means of keeping 
beauty. 

At such moments, he felt that she and her sort alone were 
wise; and that those who bent to the yoke of life were not 
the wise and noble creatures they thought themselves, but 
only stolid, sexless, stupid oxen. She still had wings be¬ 
cause she used them always, was always fugitive. 

At this bright dinner there were many eminent women 
among the eminent men in the drawing room. There were 
two mayors, Mr. Havemeyer, newly elected, and Mr. Harper, 
of the Native American Party, who had failed of re-election 
but had won the city’s gratitude by discarding the old night 
watchman system of “Leatherheads” for a police force of 
eight hundred men in uniform—and none too many in view 
of the prevalence of all manner of crime. 

Commodore Stevens of the new yacht club was there; 
also Mr. A. T. Stewart, who was building a great store in 
Broadway, and sealing its doom as a street of homes. 

A picturesque guest was Mrs. Anne Cora Mowatt, who 
had written a successful play called “Fashion,” though she 
had never been behind the scenes, and who had followed 
it up by becoming an actress and playing “The Lady of 
Lyons” after one rehearsal. And she had triumphed! This 
was a new way for a woman to repair her broken fortunes. 

Across from her and somewhat terrified by the situation 
was the Rev. Dr. Chirnside, who abhorred the playhouse 
and never failed to view with alarm the fact that New 
York already had eight theatres and that they were rebuilt 
as fast as they burned down—which was pretty fast. Against 
these there were only a hundred and sixty churches, in¬ 
cluding nine African, six Catholic churches and four 
synagogues. 

RoBards’ heart lurched as always when he saw Harry 
Chalender in the drawing room. He heard him saying: ^ 

“They tell me that the number of theatres in town has not 
increased in years, though the churches have tripled in num- 


186 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

ber. Yet crime has mightily increased. How do you ex¬ 
plain that?” 

“You are flippant, sir!” said Dr. Chirnside. 

When Patty made her entrance, swimming in like a mer¬ 
maid waist-deep in a peach-blossom billow, all the babble 
stopped. All the eyes rolled her way. Her husband follow¬ 
ing her, slim, black, and solemn, felt a mere lackey, and yet 
was proud to lag at heel of such a vision. 

His pride sickened and his heart lurched when he saw 
Harry Chalender push forward and lift her hand to his 
lips. RoBards had once seen those lips on his wife’s mouth, 
and he felt now that he ought in common decency to crush 
them both to death. 

But, of course, he did not even frown when he shook 
Chalender’s hand. After all, Chalender had saved his life 
once—that black night in the fire of 1835, and he felt a 
twisted obligation. 

Another twisted emotion was his delight when he saw 
Chalender crowded away from Patty by other men. He 
felt that a man ought either to cage his wife in a cell or give 
up all respectable ideas of monopoly or monogamy. One 
might as well accept these insane notions of women’s rights 
to their own souls. And with the souls would go the bodies, 
of course. And then the home, the family, society, the na¬ 
tion were lost. He could not imagine the chaos that would 
ensue. His own heart was a seething chaos in little. 

And then all the men were eclipsed by the entrance of 
Daniel Webster—no less a giant than Daniel Webster. As 
a citizen RoBards felt an awe for him; as a lawyer, a 
reverence. 

Patty gasped with pride at meeting the man. She bowed 
so low that she almost sat on the floor. And Webster, look¬ 
ing down on her, bent till his vast skull was almost on a 
level with Patty’s little china-doll head. 

Her humility was such a pretty tribute to his genius that 
his confusion was perfect. His mastiff jaws wagged with 
the shock of her grace. His huge eyes saddened in a dis¬ 
tress of homage. For once he could find no words. There 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


187 

was only a groan of contentment in that columnar throat, 
equally famous for its thirst and for the eloquence of the 
angelic voice that stormed the senate chamber and shook 
the judicial benches, yet purled like a brook at a female ear. 

Patty almost swooned when she learned that she was to 
go out on Webster’s arm. 

When the black servants folded back the doors, a table 
like a lake of mahogany waited them, gleaming with a 
flotilla of heavily laden silver, platters, tureens, baskets, 
and bowls in a triple line. 

Patty and the leonine Daniel followed the lady of the 
mansion, and when she was formally handed to her throne, 
the clatter began. The servants fairly rained food upon 
the guests, soup and fish and ham and turkey, venison and 
mutton, corn and all the vegetables available, sweets of every 
savor, cheeses and fruits, claret and champagne and a dulcet 
Madeira brought down from the attic where it had spent its 
years swinging from the heat of the sun-baked roof to the 
chill of the long winters. 

RoBards noted that many of his old schoolmates, still 
boys in his eye, were far older than Patty had allowed him 
to be. And their wives were as shapeless as the haunches 
of meat whose slices they attacked without grace. Patty 
made a religion of little manners and charming affectations. 
She took off her gloves with caressing upward strokes and 
folded them under her napkin. She sipped her soup with a 
birdlike mincing that was beyond cavil. 

And when Mr. Webster, with old-fashioned courtesy, 
challenged her to champagne, she accepted the challenge, 
selecting the wine he named, held her glass to be filled, and 
while the bubbles tumbled and foamed to the brim and 
broke over it in a tiny spray, she looked into the monstrous 
eyes of the modern Demosthenes, and with the silent elo¬ 
quence of her smile, nullified the ponderous phrases he 
would have rolled upon her. 

He found his voice later, but RoBards could hear Patty’s 
voice now and then, tinkling like raindrops between thunders. 
And finally he heard her murmur in little gasps: 


188 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


“Oh, Mr. Senator!—if only you—you !—would take my 
father’s case—against this wicked, wicked city—then—jus¬ 
tice would be done—at last—for once at least.” 

A faintness, less of jealousy than despair, made RoBards 
put down his Madeira glass so sharply that a blotch of the 
wine darkened the linen of the cloth. He set the glass above 
the stain lest the hostess see him and want to murder him. 
And this blunder completed his misery. 

But Patty stared up into Webster’s eyes as if she had 
never seen a man before. 

By this time Mr. Webster was well toward the befuddle- 
ment for which he was noted, and his reply was more fervent 
than elegant: 

“My dear, ’f you want my assisshance in your father’s— 
your father’s lawsuit, I shall consider it a prilivege, a 
glorious pril—op’tunity to pay homage to one of mos’ beau’i- 
ful wom’n, one of mos’ charming—Madam, I shallenge you 
to champ—champagne.” 

Patty went through the rites again, but put her hand 
across the glass when the servant would have refilled it. 
She finished her dessert, and deftly resumed her gloves be¬ 
fore the hostess threw down her napkin and rose to lead the 
ladies to the dressing room. Patty, for all her accepted 
challenges, was one of the few women who made the door 
without a waver. 

Her husband followed her with his eyes and longed to go 
with her and unpack his heart of the grudge it held. In his 
very presence she had asked another lawyer to supply the 
ability she denied him. But he had to stay and watch with 
disgust the long tippling and prattling and male gossip. 

A few of the men told stories of excellent spice, but some 
were as loathsome to his mood as one of the worm-eaten 
walnuts that he bit into before he realized its estate. He 
had no stomach for Harry Chalender’s gabble, and found 
nothing but impudence and bad taste in the problem Chalen- 
der posed to poor old Dr. Chirnside. Harry said that he had 
made a ghastly mistake. In talking to a well-bred young 
female who had snubbed him for insulting her by offering to 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


189 

help her on with her shawl, he had somehow let slip the ob¬ 
scene word, “corsets.” The young lady pretended not to 
have understood, but blenched in silence. 

An old lady who overheard him, however, told him that 
she was old enough to advise him to apologize for the slip. 
He promised rashly, but was at his wit’s end for the 
procedure. 

“I appeal to you, Dr. Chirnside,” he said, “for spiritual 
help. How shall I apologize to that young gazelle for using 
the word ‘corsets’ in her presence—without once more using 
the word ‘corsets’ in her presence?” 

Dr. Chirnside took refuge in offended dignity, stated that 
a word unfit for the female ear was equally unfit for the 
ear of a gentleman. He choked on a last gulp of port, and 
moved to the drawing room with more rectitude in his head 
than his legs. 

Chalender was rebuked by a solemn gentleman who re¬ 
gretted the increasing indelicacy of manners. If women’s 
innocence were not protected where would human society 
look for safety ? 

“My wife had a most shocking experience recently,” he 
said. “We sent our daughter to Mrs. Willard’s school at 
Troy and what do you suppose they taught that poor child, 
sir? I should not have believed it if my wife had not told 
me. She could never have believed it if she had not seen 
it with her own eyes. 

“A woman teacher, a most unwomanly teacher, drew on 
a blackboard, sir, pictures of the internal organs of women, 
the heart, the arteries, and the veins! Yes, sir, by God, sir, 
she did! My wife and several mothers who chanced to be 
visiting the classroom rose in their indignation and left the 
room. They were too shocked to command their daughters 
to violate the discipline of the school. But I shall withdraw 
my daughter from such precincts, I assure you. Is nothing 
to be sacred? Is everything to be spoken of openly in these 
atheistic times? I ask you, sir, I ask you!” 

Chalender winked at RoBards while the old gentleman’s 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


190 

tears of wrath salted his port. Chalender wailed, “But no¬ 
body tells me how to apologize for saying corsets.” He was 
incorrigible. 

RoBards felt that his own predicament was as silly as 
Chalender’s, yet it was of equal torment. How could he 
rid himself of Mr. Webster? How could he endure his 
ponderous association? 

The giant grew less and less awesome as he absorbed 
more and more liquor. RoBards began to hope that all 
memory of his pledge to Patty might be lost in the enormous 
ache which that enormous head would feel the next morning. 

It was not. 

On the next morning, Patty received a note from the 
Astor House where Mr. Webster lived when in New York. 
She took it to her father with a cry of pride: 

“See, papa, what Eve brought you, Mr. Webster’s head 
on a platter.” 

All that RoBards could say in self-defense was a rather 
petty sarcasm: “I hope that Mr. Webster doesn’t do for you 
what he did not long ago: he drank so much that he tried 
the wrong side of the case.” 

Patty snapped back at him: “Yes, but before he sat down, 
someone told him of his mistake, and he went right on and 
answered all his own arguments—and won for his client: as 
he will for Papa.” 

“I hope so,” RoBards groaned, wondering if he really 
hoped so. 

Old Jessamine was so sure now of his two hundred 
thousand dollars that he decided to spend more of it in mak¬ 
ing doubly sure. He would engage the next best lawyer 
in America, Benjamin F. Butler. 

“With Webster and Butler as my counsel,” he roared, 
“I’ll make even this old city pay its honest debts.” 

RoBards’ head drooped as he noted that his own name 
was not even mentioned, though he had fought the case for 
ten years at his own expense and must instruct the two Titans 
in all its details. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


191 

He felt a little meaner than ever when Patty noted his 
shameful distress and said: 

“Don’t forget, papa, that you have also the distinguished 
assistance of the eminent Mr. David RoBards.” 

“Umm—ah—yes! Yes, yes, of course, of course!” 

But lesser alarms were lost in greater. And when Ro¬ 
Bards went to the post office he found there a letter from 
his farmer: 

Mr. D. RoBards esqe. 

Las nite in the big storm here youre chimbley was strok by 
litening and the seller wall all broke wat shall I do about it or 
will you get a mason from the sitty with respects as ever youre 
obed. servt. 

J. Albeson 

PS. Too cows was also strok by litening and a toolup tree. 

J. A. 

The letter was itself a lightning stroke in RoBards’ 
peace. Time and security had almost walled up Jud Lasher’s 
memory in oblivion. And now he seemed to see the body 
disclosed by a thunderbolt from heaven splitting apart the 
stones to show it grinning and malevolent. 

After the first shock he realized that the body could not 
have been revealed or Albeson would have mentioned it. 
This gave him one deep breath of relief. 

Then fear took the reins and made his heart gallop anew; 
for how could he expect a mason to repair the walls with¬ 
out tearing deep into the foundation of the chimney? 


CHAPTER XXVII 


The mystery and terror of the sky-flung thunder were 
restored to their old power over RoBards’ soul by the news 
from Tuliptree Farm. 

The lightning had suffered a distinct loss of social prestige 
when Ben Franklin coaxed it out of the clouds with a kite¬ 
string and crowded it into a pickle jar. Its immemorial 
religious standing had been practically destroyed. To com¬ 
plete its humiliation from the estate of divine missile, Pro¬ 
fessor Morse had recently set it to carrying messages, writ¬ 
ing dots and dashes, and racing back and forth along a wire 
like a retriever. 

But now again it took the form of God’s great index 
finger thrust from the heavens to point out the deed too safely 
buried in the walls of RoBards’ home. 

He could have wished that Professor Morse’s lightning 
might have brought him instant news of the actual appear¬ 
ance of the shattered chimney. There was a wire all the 
way between New York and Philadelphia, but the far- 
writer had not been extended north as yet. 

So RoBards must take the train. Fortunately the New 
York and Harlem Railroad had already reached White 
Plains, and he had only five miles more to ride on a horse 
of flesh and blood. His eyes scanned the horizon fiercely, 
and his heart beat with such a criminal’s anxiety that he 
would almost have welcomed the exposure of his crime—if 
crime it were. 

The first thing that topped his horizon was the great tulip 
tree overtowering the house. Its lofty plume was untarnished. 
Some other tree, then, must have been blasted. Next, the 
roof-line rose to view. It looked strange with the chimney 
gone. 


192 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


193 


As the road curved in its approach, he saw where the brick 
were torn away, the clapboards singed with the streaked 
fire, and the foundation stones ripped open. 

The farmer met him at the gate with cordial homage and 
a crude buffoonery more pleasant to his ear than the most 
elegant epigram, since it proved him still ignorant of what 
the walls contained. 

"‘Thar lays your chimbley, Mr. RoBards,” he said, “jest 
as the Lord left her. I ain’t teched e’er a brick, and I told 
the wife not to heave none of ’em at me when she lost her 
temper—so to speak, seein’ as she don’t seem to have ever 
found it, haw haw haw!” 

“He will have his joke!” Mrs. Albeson tittered. 

“A sense of humor certainly helps you through the world,” 
said her husband as he took the horse in charge. Mrs. 
Albeson waddled after RoBards, and checked him to mur¬ 
mur: 

“Haow’s pore little Immy?” 

That eternal reminder hurt him sore. She startled him by 
adding, “Old Mis’ Lasher keeps hangin’ about. More 
trouble! One of her girls has ran away with a hired man 
from the city, and she’s more lost than the boy that’s went 
a-whalin’. Mis’ Lasher prob’ly seen you drive past and 
she’ll likely be along any minute naow.” 

“Yes, yes; very well; all right,” said RoBards, impatient 
to be alone. And Mrs. Albeson went back to her kitchen, 
taking her snub patiently. 

RoBards studied the course of the thunderbolt and was 
glad that he had not been present to see it smite and hear it. 
He would probably have died of fear. He shivered now 
with the bare imagination, and cravenly wondered if any 
thrill of it could have stirred Jud Lasher. 

He was so absorbed in this fantasy that he jumped when 
Albeson spoke across his shoulder: 

“Looks like to me, the mason would have to pull the 
whole thing daown, shore up the walls, dig out the founda¬ 
tion, and set her up all over again!” 

“Nonsense!” said RoBards. 


194 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

“All right! It’s your haouse. Mend it the way you 
want to.” 

RoBards sent him to White Plains to fetch a mason, and 
remained to study the crevice that split the thick foundation 
as if Achilles had hurled his own unequaled javelin of 
Pelian ash into the tomb of another Patroclus. The fabric 
of the cellar wall was not opened all the way, but the wedge 
of the gap pointed right at the burial chamber. 

As he wondered how soon some casual inspector would 
follow the lead of that arrow head and break open the wall, 
RoBards heard at his elbow that well-remembered querulous 
sniffle of Mrs. Lasher’s: 

“H’are ye, Mist’ RoBards? Too bad what the lightnin’ 
done to your nice house, ain’t it? But the Lord has his 
reasons, I expect. Here he hits your home where there’s 
never been any wickedness and leaves mine alone, as if there 
had ever been anything else there. 

“What I wanted to ask you was this, please; I was talkin’ 
to you about the boy Jud goin’ away to sea. Well, I ain’t 
heard a word from the pore child sence. Where d’you 
s’pose he could be now?—ridin’ out on a mast most like; 
or sinkin’ in a whaleboat that some whale has knocked to 
flinders with one swat of his tail. A friend of my hus¬ 
band’s was here recent, and he’d been on a whaler and he 
told me terrible things. 

“Poor Jud! There ain’t never a night but I pray the 
Lord to look after him and be a mother to him, but I do’ 
know. Sometimes of nights I dream about him. I see him 
drownin' and callin’ to me, ‘Maw! Maw! save me!’ I 
wake up all of a sweat and tremblin’ like mad, but his voice 
goes on callin’ me. Sometimes it follers me all day long. 
I can see him out in that terrible big ocean—just one pore 
boy in all that sea with nobody to call to but his mother. 
Oh, God, sir, it’s no fun.” 

It would have been a mercy of a sort to end her night¬ 
mares with a word of assurance that her son would never 
die of drowning. But RoBards had his own children to 
consider. It seemed to him that a man must sometimes lie 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


195 

j 

for posterity’s sake. This legacy of truth he had no right 
to entail upon his children. He must take his deed and all 
its consequences to hell with him. 

So there they stood, the murderer and the mother, staring 
at the very tomb of the boy; she thinking him at sea and 
he wondering whether or no he were dancing in infernal 
flames. Perhaps those cries his mother heard were not 
from the width of the Pacific but from the depths. 

'‘But what I was gittin’ at,” Mrs. Lasher went on, “was 
my daughter Molly—a pirty thing as ever was, but wild! 
She couldn’t see no future up here. Nobody wanted to 
marry her or be honest with her. And so one night she 
never come home at all. Where is she now? She’s in a 
deeper sea, I guess, than her brother. A man was sayin’ 
there’s eighteen thousand bad women in New York now— 
if you’ll excuse me mentionin’ it. Something tells me she’s 
one of ’em, but I never could find her if I went to look. 
I get lost so easy. She wouldn’t come back here if I did. 
Why should she? But why should all my children go 
wrong? I was wonderin’ if you could look for her or 
send somebody or do somethin’. I don’t know anybody. 
But you know the town and you’re a good honest man if 
ever they was one.” 

“If ever they was one!” RoBards wondered if ever in¬ 
deed there had been an honest man. He had meant to be 
one, but he had lapsed into the profound. And nothing so 
filled him with self-horror as his new and protecting genius 
in hypocrisy. What a Judas he was—to stand here and 
let the mother of the boy he had slain praise him, and pour 
out praise upon him! What a hypocrite this house itself 
must be! What liars those stolid walls that embraced and 
concealed the dead, and even in the face of the denouncing 
thunderbolt kept their composure, and did not reveal the 
cadaver in their deep bosom. 

He promised to search for Molly, and the mother went 
away comforted, to pray for her girl and to pray for 
the boy, and to pray for her kind friend Mr. RoBards. 
And God took her prayers! had taken them and never 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


196 

given her a sign that the boy she asked all-seeing Heaven 
to guard a thousand leagues distant was lying immured at 
her feet! If Heaven could lie so blandly by keeping silence, 
no wonder men could perjure themselves by standing mute. 

By and by Albeson returned with Failes, the bricklayer. 

Little as he knew of the ancient art of masonry, RoBards 
was determined that no member of that guild should bring 
a lawyer to the law. 

Failes wanted to tear the whole foundation away and 
start all over. Every art and trade has its religion, and 
this mason’s was a stubborn belief in doing a job thorough. 
But he yielded at last to RoBards’ insistence, and charged 
an extra price for the surrender, and a further sum for be¬ 
ginning at once. 

As an excuse for his haste RoBards alleged the neces¬ 
sity of his presence in town. When Failes said that he 
didn’t need any legal advice about layin’ brick and patchin’ 
stone, RoBards made other pretexts for delay. He dared not 
leave the house until the broken tomb was sealed again. 

Days went racking by while the mason’s leisurely pro¬ 
cedure, his incessant meditation upon nothing at all, his 
readiness to stop and chatter, drove RoBards almost out of 
his wits. 

But at last the chimney stood erect again, dappled with 
new brick and crisscrossed with white mortar unweathered. 

Then and then only, RoBards went back to New York, 
to tell more lies to Mr. Jessamine, who wondered at his 
neglect of the necessary conferences with Daniel Webster 
and Benjamin F. Butler, whom some called General be¬ 
cause he had been Attorney General under Jackson and Van 
Buren, and some called Professor because he was the chief 
instructor at the City University. 

RoBards outlined the situation as he saw it and they 
accepted his reasoning without demur. They would also 
accept a heavy fee without demur. 

The case was called in the Court of Errors in the City 
Hall building on a day of stifling heat. There was some¬ 
thing disheartening in the very air, and RoBards gave up 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 197 

hope. The counsel for the city objected to the reargument 
of the case on the ground that the legal principles involved 
had already been decided in the city's favor in the similar 
Fire Case of Tabelee et cd. vs. the Mayor et al. 

Old Jessamine knew nothing of legal principles and Ro- 
Bards could hardly keep him from popping up and bluster¬ 
ing what he whispered to Webster: 

“Legal principles! legal bosh! I've been poor for ten 
years now and the city has grown fat and rich, and it has 
no right to send one of its most honorable merchants down 
to a pauper’s grave for no fault of his own. Make 'em give 
me my two hundred thousand dollars or they’ll murder me 
with their ‘legal principles.'" 

Mr. Webster nodded his great head and agreed that Mr. 
Jessamine was right, but the law must take its course. 

General Butler pleaded with the judges in their own lan¬ 
guage, and they consented to hear the case, though it was 
plain that they wanted only to hear Mr. Webster. They 
wanted to hear that trombone voice peal forth its super¬ 
human music. The words would mean no more than the 
libretto of the Italian works sung at Palmo’s Opera House. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


XHE assembly was worthy of the suit and of the vast 
amount involved. It thrilled old Jessamine to be the man 
who dragged the metropolis itself to the bar of its own 
conscience, and demanded penance. 

The court was large and stately. In addition to the three 
judges of the Supreme Court, and the Chancellor, the 
state senators were gathered in judgment under the presi- 
dence of the Lieutenant Governor. 

The trial was as long as it was large. As attorney for 
the plaintiff, General Butler spoke for a day. Mr. Graham 
spent another day in defense of the city. RoBards had his 
day in court, but his spirit was quenched by the knowledge 
that he was heeded only as so much sand pouring through 
the throat of the hour-glass. Webster, who sat and sweat 
and listened in silence, was the one thing waited for. 

The news that he was at last to speak packed the court¬ 
room with spectators. The day was suffocating. The hu¬ 
midity thrust needles into the flesh, and the voice of Web¬ 
ster was like the thunder that prowls along the hills on a 
torrid afternoon. 

For five hours he spoke, and enchanted people who cared 
little what words made up his rhapsody. His presence was 
embodied majesty; his voice an apocalyptic trumpet; his ges¬ 
tures epic; his argument rolled along with the rhythm, the 
flood, the logic of an Iliad. 

The audience would have given him any verdict he asked. 
Old Jessamine wept with certainty of his triumph. It was 
sublime to be the theme of such a rhapsody, and when the 
old man heard his rights proclaimed and his wrongs de¬ 
nounced by Stentor himself, he felt himself an injured god. 

For five hours Webster—well, there was hardly a verb 
198 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


199 


for what he did. Patty said that Webster just “websted.” 
Her word was as good as any. Then the court adjourned 
for the day and the spectators went out to breathe the com¬ 
mon air. 

The exhausted orator was led into the Governor’s Room 
in the City Hall, where wine was brought him in quantity. 
He was soon refreshed enough to receive congratulations 
on his achievement. But he shook his head and groaned, 
“I was very uncomfortable. I felt as if I were addressing 
a packed jury.” 

The moan from the sick lion threw a great fear into old 
Jessamine’s heart, and he listened with terror next day to 
the long argument of the counselor who spoke for the city 
to a much diminished audience. 

Waiting for the court to reach a verdict was worse than 
the trial. And the verdict was doom—doom with damages. 
An almost unanimous decision condemned Jessamine to pov¬ 
erty and decreed that he had no claim against the city. 

Patty ran to her father’s side and upheld him, while her 
mother knelt and wept at his other elbow. But he was 
inconsolable. 

He had counted on triumphing through the streets where 
he had shuffled. He had spent magnificently the money he 
was going to get. They hurried him home in a closed car¬ 
riage, but he could not endure the calls of old friends and 
enemies who came to express their sympathy. He collapsed 
like the tall chimney the lightning had struck at Tuliptree. 

It was Patty of all people who begged RoBards to take 
him and her and her mother to the farm. Even she longed 
for obscurity, for she also had squandered royally that 
money that never arrived. 

They left the children at home with Teen, and set out as 
on a long funeral ride, with their dreams in the hearse. 
The journey by train was too public and the railroad was 
a new-fangled, nerve-wrecking toy. It was dangerous, too 
—almost as dangerous as the steamboats that were blowing 
up, burning up, and sinking on all the seas and rivers, 
dragging their passengers to triple deaths. People were for- 


200 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


getting how many people had been killed by horses. They 
seemed to think that death itself was a modern invention. 

Old Jessamine had to endure a hired carriage with a 
shabby driver who talked and spat incessantly. When they 
reached at last the farm, the senile wretch was racked 
of body and soul and they put him to bed, a white-haired, 
whimpering infant. 

The rest were so wearied of the effort to console him that 
they grew disgusted with grief. Patty had just so much 
sympathy in her heart. When that was used up, you came 
to the bitter lees of it. She began to scold her father and 
at length produced a bottle of laudanum that she kept to quiet 
the children with when they cried too long. She threatened 
her father with it now: 

“You big baby! If you don’t stop that noise and go to 
sleep this very instant, I’ll give you enough of these sleeping 
drops to quiet you for a week.” 

She remembered afterward the strange look he cast upon 
the phial and how his eyes followed it when she put it back 
in the cupboard’s little forest of drugs and lotions that had 
accumulated there for years. 

Her father wept no more. He lay so quiet that she put 
her mother to bed alongside him. As she bent to kiss him 
good night, he put up his ancient arms and drew her head 
down and whispered, like a repentant child: 

“I’m sorry, my sweet, to be so great a pest to everybody. 
Forgive me, honey! I wanted to cover you with jewels and 
satins and everything your pretty heart could wish, but— 
but—I’ve lived too long.” 

“Now! now!” said Patty, kissing him again as she turned 
away to quell the sobs that sprang to her throat. 

Her mother was already fast asleep in her nightcap and 
her well-earned wrinkles; her teeth on the bureau and 
her mouth cruelly ancient. Her father stared at Patty with 
the somber old eyes of a beaten hound. Life had whipped 
him. 

Doleful enough, Patty lay down at the side of her hus- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


201 


band, who was even more forlorn than usual. She groaned: 

“Oh, dear, such an unhappy world as this is!” 

Then she sank away to sleep. She dreamed at length of 
hands snatching at her, of Macbeth and his hags about the 
cauldron of trouble. 

She woke to find her mother looking a very witch and 
plucking at her with one hand, while she clutched at her own 
throat with the other. She kept croaking something with 
her toothless gums. It was long before Patty could make it 
out: 

“Come quick! Your papa has k-k-k—your papa has 
k-k-killed himshelf ; killed himshelf!” 

Patty flung away drowsiness as one whips off a coverlet, 
and leaped from her bed, seizing her husband’s arm and 
shrieking to him to follow. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


SLEEP was like laudanum in RoBards’ tired soul and he 
stumbled drunkenly after his wife. 

They found old Jessamine sprawled along the floor, 
his scrawny legs thrust stiffly out of his nightgown, his 
toes turned up in all awkwardness. His ropy neck seemed 
to have released the head rolled aside on one cheek. Near 
an outspread hand lay the bottle.of soothing lotion. The 
cork was gone, but nothing poured from the bottle. It had 
been drained. The cupboard door stood open. 

Patty and her mother flung themselves down and implored 
a word from the suddenly re-beloved saint. But RoBards 
knew that they called to death-deafened ears. He could not 
feel frantic. A dull calm possessed him. 

The women’s screams woke the farmer and he was heard 
pounding for admission. RoBards’ first thought was one of 
caution. He bent down by Patty and said: 

“We must get the poor old boy back in his bed. We 
mustn’t let anybody know that he—that he-” 

Patty looked up at him in amazement and he felt a cer¬ 
tain rebuke of him for being so cold-hearted as to be discreet 
at such a time. But she nodded and helped him lift the un¬ 
resisting, unassisting frame to the bed and dispose its un¬ 
ruled members orderly. 

Then he went down and unlatching the door confronted 
the Albesons with a lie of convenience: 

“Mr. Jessamine has been taken very ill—very ill. Saddle 
me a horse and I’ll go for a doctor.” 

There was a tonic in the privilege of action. He flung 
into his clothes, and kissing Patty good-by, ran down the 
stairs and out into the starlit deeps. He stepped from the 
porch right into the saddle, and the horse launched out like 
a sea gull. 


202 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 203 

Startled from sleep, it was wild with the unusual call to 
action and ran with fury along the black miles. RoBards’ 
hat flew back at the first rush of wind but he did not pause 
to hunt it. The air was edged with cold and watery with 
mist. Now and then the road dipped into pools of fog. 
Riding in such night was like being drawn through the depths 
of an ocean. RoBards swam as on the back of a sea horse. 
There was no sound except the snorting of his nag and 
the diddirum-diddirum of hoofs that made no question of 
the road, but smoothed it all with speed. 

The doctor they always summoned at night was Dr. Mat- 
son, a fierce wizard who would never have been invoked if 
there had been a more gracious physician available. Dr. 
Matson horrified ladies by asking them blunt questions about 
the insides they were not supposed to have, and by telling 
them things in horrible Anglo Saxon simples instead of de¬ 
cent Latinity. He cursed outrageously, too. But he never 
let rain or sleet or flood or ice or any other impoliteness of 
circumstances keep him from a patient. He was not often 
entirely sober and now and then he was ugly drunk. But he 
never fell off his horse; his hands never hesitated, his knives 
rarely slipped, even though the patients leaped and yelped. 
Though he battled death with oaths and herbs and loud 
defiances, he fought. He fought like a swimmer trying to 
bring ashore some swooning soul about to drown. 

He was just putting up his horse after a long ride in the 
opposite direction when RoBards reined in. Dr. Matson 
did not wait to be invited, but slapped the saddle on the 
dripping back of his puffing nag, climbed aboard and was 
on the way before he asked, “Well, what’s the matter with 
who this time?” 

Doctors and lawyers have a right to the truth in a crisis 
and RoBards was glad of the dark when he confessed the 
shame of self-murder that had stained the old house. 

It was evident to Dr. Matson that he could be of no use 
as a physician, and another might have turned back, but 
he knew there would still be need of him. RoBards finally 
managed to say: 


204 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


“Is there any way to—must we—have you got to let every¬ 
body know that the poor old gentleman—that he—did it 
himself ?” 

Matson did not answer for half a mile. Then he laughed 
aloud: 

“I get what you’re driving at. I guess I can fix it.” 

RoBards explained: “You see, the blow of his death 
is enough for his poor wife and my poor wife, and the— 
the disgrace would be too much for them to bear.” 

This did not please the doctor so well: 

“Disgrace, did you say? Well, I suppose it would be, 
in the eyes of the damned fools that folks are. But I say 
the old man did the brave thing—the right thing. He died 
like a Roman. But it’s the fashion to call such courage 
cowardice or crime, so I’ll fix it up. Down in the city now, 
the undertakers have blank certificates already signed by 
the doctors so the undertakers can fill in the favorite form 
of death—anything their customers ask for. We ought to 
do as well up here. All the modern conveniences!” 

His sardonic cackle made RoBards shudder, but when the 
harsh brute stood by the bedside and by laying on of hands 
verified the permanent retirement of the old merchant he 
spoke with a strange gentleness: 

“It was heart failure, Mrs. Jessamine. Your husband had 
strained his heart by overwork and overanxiety for you. 
His big heart just broke. That bottle had nothin’ to do with 
it.” He sniffed it again. “It’s only an adulteration anyway. 
You can’t even buy honest poison nowadays. That’s just 
bitters and water—wouldn’t harm a fly. Grand old man, 
Mr. Jessamine. They don’t make merchants like him any 
more. It wa’n’t his fault he wa’n’t the biggest man in 
New York. He fought hard and died like a soldier. And 
now you get some sleep or I’ll give you some real sleeping 
drops.” 

He began to bluster again and they were grateful to be 
bullied. RoBards regarded him with awe, this great strong 
man breaking the withes of truth for the rescue of others. 

Dr. Matson made out a certificate of heart failure, and 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 305 

nobody questioned it. When Dr. Chirnside came up to 
preach the funeral sermon, he said that the Lord had called 
a good man home to well-earned rest. This old preacher 
was better than his creed. He would have lied, too, if he 
had known the truth; for human sympathy is so much more 
divine than the acrid theologies men concoct, that he would 
have told the sweetest falsehoods he could frame above the 
white body of his parishioner, for the sake of the aching 
hearts that still lived. 

And this is the saving grace and glory of humanity at its 
best: that in a crisis of agony it proves false to the false gods 
and inhuman creeds it has invented in colder moods. 


CHAPTER XXX 


The old man joined his two little grandchildren in the 
cluster of young tulip trees, and RoBards later built a fence 
about the knoll to make it sacred ground. 

The New York papers published encomiums upon Mr. 
Jessamine and called him one of the merchant princes who 
had made New York the metropolis of the New World. A 
stranger reading them would have imagined him a giant 
striding through a great long day to a rich sunset. 

But RoBards remembered him as one whose toil had been 
rewarded with unmerited burlesque. And for nights and 
nights afterward he was wakened by Patty strangling with 
sobs: 

“Poor papa! I was so mean to him. The last word he 
had from me was a scolding. He was afraid of life like a 
baby in the dark. Poor little papa! I was so mean to you! 
and you asked me to forgive you!” 

Then RoBards would gather her to his breast and his heart 
would swell with pain till it seemed ready to burst. He 
would clench Patty to him as if by that constriction their two 
hearts might become one. And he would stare up at the 
invisible ceiling, as Dives looked up from hell for a touch 
of some cool finger on his forehead. After a while the 
mercy would be granted; he would know by the soft slow 
rhythm of Patty’s bosom that she was asleep; and thanking 
God for that peace, beatitude of all beatitudes, he would 
draw his eyelids down over his eyes to shut out the black. 
His own breath would take up the cadence of the tulip 
boughs lulled by the soft wind that fanned the window and 
fingered the curtains drowsily. 

And the walls of that tormented home would be filled with 
the stately calm of the grave, until the resurrection of the 
next day’s sun. 


206 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


207 

The question of returning at once to town was answered 
by Mrs. Jessamine’s inability to rise from her bed after the 
funeral of her husband. She had had the harder life of 
the two. 

She had been that woman so much praised, who effaced 
herself, spoke with a low voice, went often to church, and 
often to childbed, who brought up her children in the fear 
of God, nursed them, mended their clothes and their man¬ 
ners, and saw them go forth to their various miseries, to 
death, to marriage, to maternity. She had been a good wife 
for a good long life and had taken passively what God or her 
husband or her children brought home. 

And the horror of that estate had been growing upon 
womankind through the centuries until the greatest revolu¬ 
tion the world has ever known began to seethe, and a sex 
began to demand the burdens of equality instead of the mix¬ 
ture of idolatry and contempt that had been its portion. 

Mrs. Jessamine had never joined any of the women’s 
rights movements; nor had she joined in their denunciation. 
She had felt that her time was passed for demanding any¬ 
thing. Her children had all grown beyond even the pretense 
of piety toward her; but her husband had returned to second 
childishness and renewed her motherhood. 

She had suffered a new travail, but she had been needed, 
and that kept her important. Now she had no further task 
to perform except to keep a rocking chair rocking, and to 
knit the air with her restless old bone-needle fingers. 

Her husband had killed himself because he felt disgraced, 
cheated, dishonorably discharged from the army of industry. 
She did not kill herself; she just refused to live any longer. 
She resigned from the church called life. She ceased to 
believe in it. 

Dr. Chirnside when he came up again to her funeral said 
that she died of a broken heart, and like a faithful helpmeet 
went to join the faithful husband where he waited for her 
at the foot of the Throne. 

And now another generation of the Jessamines was noth¬ 
ing more than an inscription on headstones. 


2 o8 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


Hot as it was in the city, Patty and David went back to it 
to escape the oppression of solemnity. Patty’s face was lost 
in thick black veils, though her tears glistened like dew in 
the mesh. 

After the hushed loneliness and the fragrant comeliness 
of billowy Westchester, RoBards suffered from the noise of 
the train leading to the noisy city. 

The children greeted him with rapture, but Immy 
protested: 

“Papa, please don’t call me baby any longer.” 

“All right, old lady,” he laughed and winked at Patty, who 
winked at him. And neither of them could see how child¬ 
hood was already the Past for this girl. It was only from 
the parental eyes that the scales had yet to fall. Their 
daughter was another creature from what she looked to the 
young men—and some not so young—who stared at her 
where she walked or rode in the busses on her way to school, 
to church, to a dancing lesson. 

RoBards did not know that Immy was already undergoing 
ogling, being followed, at times spoken to. She had entered 
that long gauntlet women run. Sometimes the young roughs 
and “b’hoys” who made the policeless street corners hazard¬ 
ous for women alone or in couples actually laid hands on her. 
She never told her father or mother of these adventures, 
because she did not want to worry them; she did not want 
them to know how much she knew; she did not want them 
to forbid her going about. She preferred freedom with risk 
to safety in the chains even of love. 

Musing upon her ignorance and goodness one evening, 
her father was, by a dissociation of ideas, reminded of his 
promise to look for Mrs. Lasher’s girl Molly. It would be 
a partial atonement for destroying the son, if he could re¬ 
trieve the daughter from what was decently referred to 
(when it had to be) as “a fate worse than death.” He rose 
abruptly, and said that he had to go to his office. He left 
Patty with a parlorful of callers who brought condolences 
for her in her loss of both parents. 

RoBards thought that nothing could make death more 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


209 

hateful than to receive sympathy for it on a hot night in a 
crowded room. 

As he sauntered the streets he thought that nothing could 
make life or love more hateful than their activity on a hot 
night on crowded streets. 

Mrs. Lasher had feared that Molly had joined the 
“eighteen thousand women” of a certain industry. The 
number was probably inexact, but RoBards was convinced 
that none of them all was idle that night. Every age and 
condition seemed to be represented, and every allurement 
employed from vicious effrontery to the mock demure. But 
he found no one like Molly Lasher in the long, straggling 
parade. 

He glanced in at many of the restaurants, the bar rooms, 
the oyster palaces, the dance houses, the “watering places,” 
the tobacco counters; but he dared not even walk down some 
of the streets where music came faintly through dark win¬ 
dows. His face was known, his true motive would not be 
suspected, and it would be priggish to announce it. 

He saw much that was heartbreaking, much that was 
stomach-turning. He ventured to drift at last even to the 
infamous Five Points. It was foolhardy of him to wander 
alone in that region where human maggots festered among 
rotten timbers. Mr. Charles Dickens, the popular English 
novelist, had recently gone there with two policemen, and 
found material for a hideous chapter in his insulting volume 
American Notes. 

But RoBards felt that he owed Mrs. Lasher a little of 
his courage, and he gripped his walking stick firmly. The 
policemen with their stars glinting in the dark gave him some 
courage, but even the policemen’s lives were not safe here, 
where murder was the cleanest thing that happened. 

The thronged hovels were foul enough, but their very 
cellars were a-squirm with men and women and children. In 
some of these rat holes there were filthy soup houses, bars, 
dance dives where blacks, whites and mulattoes mixed. Such 
odious folk the whites were that RoBards wondered how 
the negroes could mix with them. And children danced here, 


210 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


too, with the slime from the wharves and the foreign ships. 

The poverty was grisly. In one sink, three men with three 
spoons drained one penny bowl of broth. A man shared a 
glass of turpentine gin with his five-year-old son. Another 
fought with his shrieking wife over a mug of bog-poteen. 
Men whiffed rank tobacco at a penny a load in rented clay 
pipes they could not even buy, but borrowed for the occasion. 

On the cellar steps, in the gutters, on the door sills and 
hanging out of the windows were drunkards, whole families 
drunk from grandam to infant at a boozy breast. RoBards 
had trouble in dodging the wavering steps of a six-year-old 
girl who was already a confirmed sot. Children offered 
themselves with terrifying words. 

Only the other day six little girls of respectable family had 
been taken from one of these dives: their parents had sup¬ 
posed them to be at school. There were ten thousand 
vagrant children in New York. The little girls who swept 
crossings and sold matches or flowers or what-not sold them¬ 
selves, too. And the homeless boys who blacked boots 
studied crime and learned drunkenness in their babyhood. 
Here was the theory of infant damnation demonstrated on 
earth, with gin-soaked girls of ten and twelve maudlin at the 
side of their spewing mothers. One smutty-faced chit of 
twelve sidled up to the shuddering RoBards with words that 
made him almost faint, and tried to pick his pocket as he 
fled in horror. 

Beggars for coin half besought, half threatened him. 
Thugs, male and female, glared at him and cursed him for a 
nob, or meditated attacks upon the “goldfinch,” but their 
brains were too drenched for action. 

The very offal of poverty and crime reeled about his path, 
yet there was laughter. In one rookery two hundred negroes 
sang and patted while a juba dancer “laid it down.” Every¬ 
where there was the desperate effort to escape from the dung 
of existence by way of drug or sleep or song or combat. 

He reached the Old Brewery at last. The ancient distillery 
was now a vast ant hill of swarming misery. In every dirty 
room, in the grimy cellars beneath it, the victims of want, of 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


211 


disease, of vice slept or quarreled, vomited aloud, whimpered 
in sickness, or died half-naked and half-noticed. In front of 
it was a little barren triangle of ground, surrounded by a 
wooden fence usually draped with filthy clothes. They 
mocked it with the name of “Paradise Square.” 

He glanced into the dark and stinking alley known as 
Murderers’ Lane, but he dared not thrid it. Baffled and re¬ 
volted he returned to Broadway, a Dante coming up from the 
pit of horror. 

If Molly were in the Points she was beyond redemption. 
If she were in a higher circle of hell, she would not listen to 
him. She might be exploiting her youth in one of the secret 
“Model Artist” exhibitions of nude men and women. She 
might be a banker’s friend, a street vendor, a cigar girl, a 
barmaid, a chambermaid in a hotel or a boarding house or in 
an honest home. She might have thrown herself in one of 
the rivers. What else could a girl do for respite from hunger 
and loneliness but go into menial service, or into the most 
ancient profession, or into the grave? The stage was the 
only other open door except the convent, and Molly had 
probably no genius for either life. 

At any rate, he could not hope to find this one among the 
thousands of New York’s “lost” women by seeking for her. 
He went slowly to his home in St. John’s Square, despondent 
and morose, feeling himself soiled by his mere inspection of 
the muck heap. 

Afterward he kept his eyes alert for Molly, but it was 
months before he found her. She had been dragged into 
court for working the panel-crib game. She was not only a 
wanton, but a thief; using her grace and her jocund pretti¬ 
ness to entice fools within the reach of confederates who 
slid aside a panel in a wall and made off with their wallets 
after the classic method. 

She lured the wrong man once, a fellow who had no repu¬ 
tation to lose and did not hesitate to set up a cry that brought 
the watch. 

When she was arraigned, RoBards happened to be in 
court on behalf of another client. He saw Molly pink and 


212 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


coquettish, impudently fascinating, and so ready for deporta¬ 
tion or conquest that when he advanced to her, she accepted 
him as a gallant before she recognized him as a neighbor. 

“Aren’t you Molly Lasher?” RoBards asked. 

“I was.” 

“What are you doing here ?” 

“Oh, I’m on the cross.” He knew that she was “pattering 
the flash” for being in thievery; but he answered solemnly: 

“Your mother is on the Cross, too, Molly.” 

“Poor old thing! I’m sorry for her, but it don’t do her 
no good for me to hang there with her.” 

He entreated her to go home, and promised that the judge 
would free her at his request, but Molly was honest enough 
to say: 

“It wouldn’t work, Mister RoBards. I ain’t built for that 
life. I’ve outgrowed it.” 

He spoke to the judge, who sent her to the Magdalen 
Home instead of to Sing Sing. 

But the odor of sanctity was as stifling to Molly’s quiver¬ 
ing nostrils as the smell of new-mown hay, and she broke 
loose from pious restraint and returned to her chosen career. 
She joined destinies with a young crossman. As she would 
have put it in her new language, she became the file of a 
gonof who was caught by a nab while frisking a fat of his 
fawney, his dummy, and his gold thimble. Molly went on a 
bender when her chuck was jugged, and a star took her back 
to the Magdalen Home. 

And of this it seemed to RoBards better to leave Mrs. 
Lasher in ignorance than to certify the ghastly truth. He 
had trouble enough in store for him within his own 
precincts. 

War, for one thing, shook the nation. President Polk 
called for men and money to confirm the annexation of the 
Texas Republic and to suppress the Mexican Republic. 

With a wife and children to support and the heritage of 
bills from his father-in-law to pay, RoBards felt that patriot¬ 
ism was a luxury beyond his means. But Harry Chalender 
went out with the first troops, and by various illegitimate 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 213 

devices managed to worm himself into the very forefront of 
danger. 

Other sons of important families bribed their way to the 
zone of death and won glory or death or both at Cerro 
Gordo, Chapultepec and Churubusco. New York had a 
good laugh over the capture of General Santa Ana’s wooden 
leg and the return of the troops was a glorious holiday. 

Harry Chalender had been the second man to enter the 
gates of Mexico City and he marched home with “Captain” 
in front of his name and his arm in a graceful sling. 

When he met Patty he said : “Thank the Lord the Greasers 
left me one wing to throw round you.” 

He hugged her hard and kissed her, and then wrung the 
hand of RoBards, who could hardly attack a wounded hero, 
or deny him some luxury after a hard campaign. RoBards 
saw with dread that his wife had grown fifteen years younger 
under the magic of her old lover’s salute; her cheek was 
stained with a blush of girlish confusion. 

That night as she dressed for a ball in honor of the 
soldiers, Patty begged her husband once more to lend a hand 
at pulling her corset laces. When he refused sulkily, she 
laughed and kissed him with that long-lost pride in his long- 
dormant jealousy. But her amusement cost him dear, and 
his youth was not restored by hers. 

For months his heart seemed to be skewered and toasted 
like the meat on the turning spit in the restaurant windows. 

And then the word California assumed a vast importance, 
like a trumpet call on a stilly afternoon. It advertised a 
neglected strip of territory of which Uncle Sam had just 
relieved the prostrate Mexico. People said that it was built 
upon a solid ledge of gold. Much as RoBards would have 
liked to be rich, he could not shake off his chains. 

But Harry Chalender joined the Argonauts. His finances 
were in need of some heaven-sent bonanza, and he had no 
scruples against leaving his creditors in the lurch. 

When he called to pay his farewells RoBards chanced to 
be at home. He waited with smoldering wrath to resent any 
effort to salute Patty’s cheek. The returned soldier had 


214 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


perhaps some license, but the outbound gold-seeker could be 
knocked down or kicked on his way if he presumed. 

The always un^xpectable Chalender stupefied him by fas¬ 
tening his eyes not on Patty, but on Immy, and by daring to 
say: 

“You’re just the age, Immy, just the image of your mother 
when I first asked her to marry me. The first nugget of gold 
I find in California I’ll bring back for our wedding ring.” 

This frivolity wrought devastation in RoBards’ soul. It 
wakened him for the first time to the fact that his little 
daughter had stealthily become a woman. He blenched to 
see on her cheek the blush that had returned of late to 
Patty’s, to see in her eyes a light of enamored maturity. 
She was formed for love and ready for it, nubile, capable of 
maternity, tempting, tempted. 

The shock of discovery filled RoBards with disgust of 
himself. He felt faint, and averting his gaze from his 
daughter, turned to her mother to see how the blow struck 
her. Patty had not been so unaware of Immy’s advance. 
But her shock was one of jealousy and of terror at the 
realization that she was on the way to grandmotherhood. 

RoBards was so hurt for her in her dismay that he could 
have sprung at Chalender and beaten him to the floor, crying, 
“How dare you cease to flirt with my beautiful wife?” 

But this was quite too impossible an impulse to retain for 
a moment in his revolted soul. He stood inept and smirked 
with Patty and murmured, “Good-by! Good luck!” 

They were both pale and distraught when Chalender had 
gone. But Immy was rosy and intent. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


Something more precious than gold came to light in 
1846, something of more moment to human history than a 
dozen Mexican wars—a cure for pain. 

It came divinely opportune to Patty’s need, for her next 
child was about to tear its way into the world through her 
flesh suffering from old lacerations, and she prophesied that 
she would die of agony and take back with her into oblivion 
the boy or girl or both or whatever it was or they were that 
she was helplessly manufacturing. 

And just then there came to RoBards a letter from a 
Boston client stating that a dentist named Morton had dis¬ 
covered a gas that enabled him to extract a tooth without 
distress; another surgeon had removed a tumor from a 
patient made indifferent with ether; and that the long de¬ 
ferred godsend would make childbirth peaceable. Patty sang 
hosannas to the new worker of miracles. 

“1846 is a greater year than 1776—or 1492. That man 
Morton is a bigger man than Columbus and there should be 
a holiday in his honor. What did the discoverer of America, 
or the inventor of the telegraph or anything else, do for the 
world to compare with the angel of mercy who put a stop 
to pain ? The Declaration of Independence !—Independence 
from what ?—taxes and things. * But pain—think of inde¬ 
pendence from pain! Nothing else counts when something 
aches. And the only real happiness is to hurt and get over it.” 

She repeated her enthusiasm to Dr. Chirnside when he 
happened in on his pastoral rounds. To her dismay the old 
clergyman was not elated, but horrified. 

Dr. Chirnside, who opposed everything new as an atheism, 
everything amusing as a sin, declared that God decreed pain 
for his own inscrutable purposes in his own infinite love. 

215 


216 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


Since Holy Writ had spoken of a woman crying aloud in 
travail it would be a sacrilege to deny her that privilege. The 
kindly old soul would have crucified a multitude for the sake 
of a metaphor. He had in his earlier days preached a ser¬ 
mon against railroads because God would have mentioned 
them to Moses or somebody if he had approved of having 
his creatures hurled through space at the diabolic speed of 
twenty miles an hour. He had denounced bowling alleys for 
the same reason, and also because they were fashionable and 
more crowded than his own pews. 

RoBards having seen operations where the patient had 
to be clamped to a board and gagged for the sake of the 
neighbors’ ears, could not believe that this was a pleasant 
spectacle to any respectable deity. 

He almost came to a break with Dr. Chirnside, who seemed 
to see nothing incongruous in calling that divine which men 
called inhuman. 

All of the learned men called “doctors,” whether of divin¬ 
ity, medicine, law, philosophy, or what-not, seemed to fight 
everything new however helpful. Martyrdom awaited the 
reformer and the discoverer whether in religion, astronomy, 
geography, chemistry, geology, anything. 

The names of well-meaning gentlemen like Darwin, Hux¬ 
ley, Tyndall had recently been howled at with an irate disgust 
not shown toward murderers and thieves. 

For the next twenty years a war would be waged upon the 
pain-killers, and the names of Morton, Jackson, and Wells 
would inspire immediate quarrel. Each had his retainers in 
the contest for what some called the “honor” of discovering 
the placid realm of anaesthesia; and what some called the 
“sacrilege” of its discovery. 

It was written in the sibylline books of history as yet un¬ 
disclosed that Wells should be finally humbled to insanity 
and suicide; and that Morton, after years of vain effort to 
get recognition, should retire to a farm, where he would die 
from the shock of reading a denial of his “pretensions.” 
They would put on his tombstone the legend: “By whom 
pain in surgery was averted and annulled; before whom, in 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 217 

all time, surgery was agony since whom science has had con¬ 
trol of pain.” Yet one’s own epitaph is a little late, however 
flattering. 

RoBards shared Patty’s reverence for the Prometheus who 
had snatched from heaven the anodyne to the earth’s worst 
curse. He made sure that she should have the advantage of 
the cloud of merciful oblivion when she went down into the 
dark of her last childbed. 

Her final baby was born “still,” as they say; but Patty also 
was still during the ordeal. That was no little blessing. 
RoBards was spared the hell of listening in helplessness to 
such moans as Patty had hitherto uttered when her hour had 
come upon her unawares. 

But the high hopes from this discovery were doomed to 
sink, for man seems never to get quite free from his primeval 
evils, and RoBards was to find that the God or the devil of 
pain had not yet been baffled by man’s puny inventions. 

Longing for opportunities to exploit the suppressed brav¬ 
eries in his soul, RoBards found nothing to do but run to 
fires. There were enough of these and the flames fell alike 
upon the just and the unjust. Christ Church in Ann Street 
went up in blazes; the Bowery Theatre burned down for the 
fourth time; a sugar house in Duane Street was next, two 
men being killed and RoBards badly bruised by a tumbling 
wall. The stables of Kipp and Brown were consumed with 
over a hundred screaming horses; the omnibus stables of the 
Murphys roasted to death a hundred and fifty horses, and 
took with them two churches, a parsonage, and a school. 
While this fire raged, another broke out in Broome Street, 
another in Thirty-fifth Street and another in Seventeenth. 
The Park Theatre was burned for only the second time in its 
fifty years of life; but it stayed burned. 

And then Patty succeeded in persuading her husband to 
resign from the volunteers and remove his boots and helmet 
from the basket under the bed. 

This was the knell of his youth and he felt that he had 
been put out to grass like an old fire horse, but his heart 
leaped for years after when some old brazen-mouthed bell 


218 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


gave tongue. He left it to others, however, to take out the 
engine and chase the sparks. 

He had come to the port of slippered evenings, but 
monotony was not yet his portion. For there were domestic 
fire bells now. 

Patty and Immy were mutual combustibles. They had 
reached the ages when the mother forgets her own rebellious 
youth as completely as if she had drunk Lethe water; and 
when the daughter demands liberty for herself and imposes 
fetters on her elders. 

Patty developed the strictest standards for Immy and was 
amazed at the girl’s indifference to her mother’s standards. 
All of Patty’s quondam audacities in dress and deportment 
were remembered as conformities to strict convention. 
Immy’s audacities were regarded as downright indecencies. 

Immy, for her part, was outraged at the slightest hint of. 
youthfulness in her mother. With her own shoulders gleam¬ 
ing and her young breast brimming at the full beaker of her 
dress, Immy would rebuke her mother for wearing what they 
called a “half-high.” Both powdered and painted and were 
mutually horrified. Immy used the perilous liquid rouge and 
Patty the cochinealleaves, and each thought the other un¬ 
pardonable—and what was worse, discoverable. 

Breathless with her own wild gallopades in the polka and 
dizzy from waltzing in the desperate clench of some young 
rake, Immy would glare at her mother for twirling about 
the room with a gouty old judge holding her elbow-tips; or 
for laughing too loudly at a joke that her mother should 
never have understood. 

Finally, Patty had recourse to authority and told her hus¬ 
band that the city was too wicked for the child. She—even 
Patty—who had once bidden New York good-by with tears, 
denounced it now in terms borrowed from Dr. Chirnside’s 
tirades. 

Immy was mutinous and sullen. She refused to leave and 
threatened to run off with any one of a half dozen beaux, 
none of whom her parents could endure. 

This deadlock was ended by aid from a dreadful quarter. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 219 

By a strange repetition of events, the cholera, which had 
driven Patty into RoBards’ arms and into the country with 
him—the cholera which had never been seen again and for 
whose destruction the Croton Water party had taken full 
glory—the cholera came again. 

It began in the pus-pocket of the Points and drained them 
with death; then swept the town. Once more there was a 
northward hegira. Once more the schoolhouses were hos¬ 
pitals and a thousand poor sufferers died in black agony on 
the benches where children had conned their Webster’s spell¬ 
ing books. Five thousand lives the cholera took before it 
went its mysterious way. 

Coming of a little bolder generation, Immy was not so 
panic-stricken as her mother had been. But since all her 
friends deserted the town, she saw no reason for tarrying. 

The country was not so dull as she had feared. The air 
was spicy with romance; fauns danced in the glades and sat 
on the stone fences to pipe their unspeakable tunes; nymphs 
laughed in the brooks, and dryads commended the trees. 

The railroads made it easy for young bucks to run out on 
a train farther in an hour or two than they could have ridden 
in a day in the good old horseback times. A fashion for 
building handsome country places was encouraged by the 
cholera scare. White Plains began to grow in elegance and 
Robbin’s Mills changed its homely name to Kensico, after 
an old Indian chief. 

Before many days Immy was busier than in town. Young 
men and girls made the quiet yard resound with laughter. 
The tulip trees learned to welcome and to shelter sentimental 
couples. Their great branches accepted rope swings, and 
petticoats went foaming toward the clouds while their 
wearers shrieked and fell back into the arms of pushing 
young men. 

Picnics filled the groves with mirth, dances called gay 
cliques to lamplit parlors and to moonlit porches. Tuliptree 
Farm began to resemble some much frequented roadside 
tavern. It was as gay as Cato’s once had been outside New 
York. 


220 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


Immy seemed to gather lovers as a bright candle summons 
foolish moths. Patty and her husband were swiftly pushed 
back upon a shelf of old age whence they watched, incred¬ 
ulous, and unremembering, the very same activities with 
which they had amazed their own parents. 

Two lovers gradually crowded the rest aside. The more 
attractive to Immy’s parents was a big brave youth named 
Halleck. He had joined the old Twenty-seventh Regiment, 
recently reorganized as the Seventh, just in time to be called 
out in the Astor Place riots. 

The citizens had lain fairly quiet for a long while and had 
not attacked a church or a minister or a theatre for nearly 
fifteen years. But the arrival of the English actor Macready 
incensed the idolators of Edwin Forrest and developed a 
civil war. 

Young Halleck was with the Seventh when it marched 
down to check the vast mob that overwhelmed the police, and 
drove back a troop of cavalry whose horses were maddened 
by the cries and the confinement. The populace roared down 
upon the old Seventh and received three volleys before it 
returned to civil life. 

This exploit in dramatic criticism cost the public thirty- 
four deaths and an unknown number of wounds. The 
Seventh had a hundred and forty-one casualties. Halleck 
had been shot with a pistol and battered with paving stones. 
To RoBards the lawyer he was a civic hero of the finest sort. 
The only thing Immy had against him was that her parents 
recommended him so highly. 

Love that will not be coerced turned in protest toward the 
youth whom her parents most cordially detested, Dr. Chirn- 
side’s son, Ernest, a pallid young bigot, more pious than his 
father, and as cruel as Cotton Mather. Patty wondered how 
any daughter of hers could endure the milk-sop. But Immy 
cultivated him because of his very contrast with her own 
hilarity. 

His young pedantries, his fierce denunciations of the wick¬ 
edness of his companions, his solemn convictions that man 
was born lost in Adam’s sin and could only be redeemed 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


221 


from eternal torment by certain dogmas, fascinated Immy, 
who had overfed on dances and flippancies. 

RoBards could not help witnessing from his library win¬ 
dow the development of this curious religious romance. Even 
when he withdrew to his long writing table and made an 
honest effort to escape the temptation to eavesdropping, he 
* would be pursued by the twangy sententiousness of Ernest 
and the silvery answers of Immy. There was an old iron 
settee under his window and a rosebush thereby and the 
young fanatics would sit there to debate their souls. 

It was a godlike privilege and distress to overhear such a 
courtship. His daughter bewildered him. At times Immy 
was as wild as a maenad. She danced, lied, decoyed, teased, 
accepted caresses, deliberately invited wrestling matches for 
her kisses. She rode wild horses and goaded them wilder. 
She would come home with a shrieking cavalcade and set her 
foam-flecked steed at the front fence, rather than wait for 
the gate to be opened. 

Seeing Immy in amorous frenzies RoBards would be 
stricken with fear of her and for her. He would wonder if 
Jud Lasher had not somehow destroyed her innocence; if his 
invasion of her integrity had not prepared her for corrup¬ 
tion. How much of that tragedy did she remember? Or 
had she forgotten it altogether ? 

He would shudder with the dread that Jud Lasher, who 
was lying beneath his feet, might be wreaking a posthumous 
revenge, completing his crime with macaberesque delight. 

Then Immy’s mood would change utterly. She would 
repent her youth as a curse, and meditate a religious career. 
There was a new fashion for sending missionaries to Africa 
and she was tempted to proselytize the jungle. Ernest 
rescued her at least from this. He told her that she must 
make sure her own soul was saved before she went out to 
save Zulus. 

Sometimes RoBards, listening with his pen poised above 
an unfinished word, would seem to understand her devotion 
to young Chimside, her acceptance of his intolerant tyranny 
and the insults he heaped upon her as a wretch whom his 


222 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


God might have foredoomed from past eternity to future 
eternity. He would talk of election and the conviction of 
sin and of salvation. 

And Immy would drink it down. 

At last there came an evening when young Chirnside called 
in manifest exaltation. He led Immy to the settee beneath 
the library window, and RoBards could not resist the oppor¬ 
tunity to overhear the business that was so important. 

He went into his library and softly closed the door. He 
tiptoed to a vantage point and listened. 

Young Chirnside coughed and stammered and beat about 
the bush for a maddening while before he came to his thesis, 
which was that the Lord had told him to make Immy his 
wife. He had come to beg her to listen to him and heaven. 
He had brought a little ring along for the betrothal and— 
and—how about it? His combination of sermon and pro¬ 
posal ended in a homeliness that proved his sincerity. After 
all that exordium, the point was, How about it ? 

That was what RoBards wanted to know. He waited as 
breathlessly as his prospective son-in-law. Immy did not 
speak for a terrible while. And then she sighed deeply, and 
rather moaned than said: 

“Ernest, I am honored beyond my dreams by what you 
have said. To be the wife of so good a man as you would 
be heaven. But am I good enough for you ?” 

“Immy!” Chirnside gasped, “you’re not going to tell me 
you’ve been wicked!” 

“I’ve been wicked enough, but not veiy wicked—consider¬ 
ing. The thing I must tell you about is—it’s terribly hard 
to tell you, dear. But you ought to know, you have a right 
to know. And when you know, you may not think—you may 
not think—you may feel that you wouldn’t care to marry me. 
I wouldn’t blame you—I’d understand, dear—but ” 

“Tell me! In heaven’s name, tell me!” 

RoBards was stabbed with a sudden knowledge of what 
tortured her thought. He wanted to cry out to her, “Don’t 
tell! Don’t speak! I forbid you!” 

But that would have betrayed his contemptible position as 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


223 

eavesdropper. And, after all, what right had he to rebuke 
such honesty? She knew her soul. She was inspired per¬ 
haps with the uncanny wisdom of young lovers. 

The wish to confess—though “confess” was not the word 
for her guiltless martyrdom—was a proof of her nobility. 
It would be a test of this young saint’s mettle. If he shrank 
from her, it would rescue her from a pigeon-hearted recreant. 
If he loved her all the more for her mischance, he would 
prove himself better than he seemed, more Christlike than 
he looked. 

And so RoBards, guessing what blighting knowledge Immy 
was about to unfold, stood in the dark and listened. Tears 
of pity for her scalded his clenched eyelids and dripped bit¬ 
ter into his quivering mouth. 

Unseeing and unseen, he heard his child murmuring her 
little tragedy to the awesmitten boy at her side. She seemed 
as pitifully beautiful as some white young leper whispering 
through a rag, “Unclean!” 

What would this pious youth think now of the God that 
put his love and this girl to such a test? Would he howl 
blasphemies at heaven? Would he cower away from the 
accursed woman or would he fling his arms about her and 
mystically heal her by the very divinity of his yearning? 

RoBards could almost believe that Jud Lasher down there 
in the walls was also quickened with suspense. His term in 
hell might depend on this far-off consequence of his deed. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


A STRANGE thing, a word: and stranger, the terror of it. 
Stranger still, the things everybody knows that must never 
be named. Strangest of all, that the mind sees most vividly 
what is not mentioned, what cannot be told. 

Immy, for all her rebellious modernness and impatience of 
old-fashioned pruderies, was a slave of the word. 

And now she must make clear to a young man of even 
greater nicety than she, an adventure it would have sobered 
a physician to describe to another. She gasped and groped 
and filled her story with the pervividness of eloquent 
silences: 

‘‘It was when I was a little girl—a very little girl. There 
was a big terrible boy—a young man, rather—who lived 
down the road—ugly and horrible as a hyena. And one 
day—when Papa was gone—and I was playing—he came 
along and he spoke to me with a grin and a—a funny look 
in his eyes. And he took hold of me—it was like a snake! 
and I tried to break loose—and my little brother fought him. 
But he knocked and kicked Keith down—and took me up and 
carried me away. I fought and screamed but he put his hand 
over my mouth and almost smothered me—and kept on 
running—then—then ” 

Then there was a hush so deep that RoBards felt he could 
hear his tears where they struck the carpet under his feet. 
His eyelids were locked in woe, but he seemed to see what 
she thought of; he seemed to see the frightened eyes of 
Ernest Chirnside trying not to understand. 

Immy went on: 

“Then Jud Lasher heard Papa coming and he ran. Papa 
caught him and beat him almost to death—but it was too late 
to save me. I didn’t understand much, then. But now—! 
Papa made me promise never to speak of it; but you have a 

224 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 225 

higher right than anybody, Ernest—that is, if you still— 
unless you—oh, tell me !—speak!—say something!” 

The boy spoke with an unimaginable wolfishness in his 
throat: 

“Where is the man ?—where is that man ?” 

“I don’t know. I never saw him after that—oh, yes, he 
came back again once. But Papa was watching and saved 
me from him—and after that I never heard of him. Yes, I 
did hear someone say he went to sea.” 

Another hush and then Ernest’s voice, pinched with 
emotion: 

“I believe if I could find that villain I could almost kill 
him. My soul is full of murder. God forgive me!” 

He thought of his own soul first. 

Poor Immy suffered the desolation of a girl who finds 
her hero common clay; her saint a prig. But with apology 
she said: 

“I ought never to have told you.” 

He dazed her by his reply: 

“Oh, I won’t tell anybody; never fear! But don’t tell me 
any more just now. I must think it out.” 

He wanted to think!—at a time when thinking was pol¬ 
troon ; when only feeling and impulsive action were decent! 
Immy waited while he thought. At length he said: 

“If that man still lives he’ll come back again!” 

“No! no!” 

“He’ll come back and get you.” 

“You wouldn’t let him, would you?” 

“You belong to him, in a way. It is the Lord’s will.” 

He could say that and believe it! The young zealot could 
worship a god who could doom, ten thousand years before 
its birth, a child to a thousand, thousand years of fiery tor¬ 
ment because of an Adam likewise doomed to his dis¬ 
obedience. 

The young man’s own agony had benumbed him perhaps, 
but RoBards could have leapt from the window and strangled 
him as a more loathsome, a clammier reptile than Jud Lasher. 
But he, too, was numb with astonishment. 


226 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


Then the boy went human all at once and began to sob, to 
wail, “Oh, Immy, Immy! my poor Immy!” 

RoBards stepped forward to the window in a rush of hap¬ 
piness, and saw Immy put out her hands to her lover. He 
pushed them away and rose and moved blindly across the 
grass. But there was a heavy dew and he stepped back to 
the walk to keep his feet from getting wet. 

He stumbled along the path to the gate and leaned there a 
moment, sobbing. Then he swung it wide as he ran out to 
where his horse was tied. And the gate beat back and forth, 
creaking, like a rusty heart. 

RoBards stood gazing down at his daughter, eerily beau¬ 
tiful in the moonlight through the rose leaves. He saw her 
dim hands twitching each at the other. Then they fell still 
in her lap and she sat as a worn-out farmwife sits whose 
back is broken with overlong grubbing in the soil and with 
too heavy a load home. 

For a long time he sorrowed over her, then he went 
stealthily across his library into the hall, and out to the porch 
where he looked at the night a moment. He discovered 
Immy as if by accident, and exclaimed, “Who’s that ?” 

“It’s only me, Papa, only me!” 

“Only you? Why you’re all there is. You’re the most 
precious thing on earth.” 

He put his arm about her, but she sprang to her feet and 
snapped at him: 

“Don’t! If you please, Papa, don’t touch me. I—I’m not 
fit to be touched.” 

She stood away from him, bracing herself with a kind of 
pride. Then she broke into a maudlin giggle, such as Ro¬ 
Bards had heard from the besotted girls in the Five Points. 
And she walked into the house. 

He followed her, and knocked on her door. But she would 
not answer, and when he tried it, it was locked. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


The next morning RoBards beard her voice again. It 
was loud and rough, drowning the angry voice of her 
brother, Keith. She was saying: 

“I was a fool to tell him! And I was a fool to tell you 
I told him!” 

“I’ll beat him to death when I find him, that's all I’ll do!” 
Keith roared, with his new bass voice. 

“If you ever touch him or mention my name to him—or 
his name to me,” Immy stormed, “I’ll—I’ll kill—I’ll kill my¬ 
self. Do you understand?” 

“Aw, Immy, Immy!” Keith pleaded with wonderful pity 
in his voice. Then she wept, long, piteously, in stabbing 
sobs that tore the heart of her father. 

He knew that she was in her brother’s arms, for he could 
hear his voice deep with sympathy. But RoBards dared 
not make a third there. It was no place for a father. 

He went to his library and stood staring at the marble 
hearthstone. Somewhere down there was what was left of 
Jud Lasher. He had not been destroyed utterly, for he was 
still abroad like a fiend, wreaking cruel harm. 

Immy spoke and RoBards was startled, for he had not 
heard her come in: 

“Papa.” 

“Yes, my darling!” 

“Do you think Jud Lasher will ever come back ?” 

“I know he won’t.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Oh, I just feel sure. He’d never dare come back.” 

“If he did would I belong to him?” 

“Would a lamb belong to a sheep-killing dog that mangled 
it?” 


227 


228 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


“That’s so. Thank you, Papa.” And she was gone. 

A boy on a horse brought her a note that afternoon. She 
told no one its contents and when Patty asked who sent it, 
Immy did not answer. RoBards was sure it came from 
Ernest Chirnside, for the youth never appeared. But Ro¬ 
Bards felt no right to ask. 

Somehow he felt that there was no place for him as a 
father in Immy’s after-conduct. She returned to her wild¬ 
ness, like a deer that has broken back to the woods and will 
not be coaxed in again. 

How could he blame her ? What solemn monition could he 
parrot to a soul that had had such an experience with hon¬ 
esty, such a contact with virtue ? 

Young Chirnside never came to the house. But he was 
the only youth in the countryside, it seemed, that kept away. 
Patty tried to curb Immy’s frantic hilarities, but she had such 
insolence for her pains that she was stricken helpless. 

Then Immy decided that the country was dull. The young 
men went back to town, or to their various colleges. Keith 
went to Columbia College, which was still in Park Place, 
though plans were afoot for moving it out into the more 
salubrious rural district of Fiftieth Street and Madison Ave¬ 
nue. 

Keith met Chirnside on the campus, but he could not force 
a quarrel without dragging Immy’s name into it. So he let 
slip the opportunity for punishment, as his father had let slip 
the occasion for punishing Chalender. Father and son were 
curiously alike in their passion for secrets. 

Keith had little interest in the classic studies that made up 
most of the curriculum. He could not endure Latin and the 
only thing he found tolerable in Csesar was the description 
of the bridge that baffled the other students with its diffi¬ 
culties. 

He was an engineer by nature. He had never recovered 
from his ambition to be an hydraulic savior of the city. And 
it looked as if the town would soon need another redemption. 

The citizens had treated the Croton as a toy at first. The 
hydrants were free and the waste was ruinous. This bless- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


229 

ing, like the heavenly manna, became contemptible with 
familiarity. Children made a pastime of sprinkling the 
yards and the streets. The habit of bathing grew until many 
were soaking their hides every day. During the winter the 
householders let the water run all day and all night through 
the open faucets, to prevent the pipes from freezing. There 
were twelve thousand people, too, who had water in their 
houses! 

Already in 1846 the Commissioners had begun to talk of 
a costly new reservoir as a necessity. For thirteen days that 
year the supply had to be shut off while the aqueduct was 
inspected and leaks repaired. What if another great fire 
had started? 

In 1849 the Water Commissioners were dismissed and the 
Croton Aqueduct Department entrusted with the priesthood 
of the river god and his elongated temple. 

So Keith looked forward to the time when he should be 
needed by New York and by other cities. And he studied 
hard. But he played hard, too. The students were a lawless 
set, and drunkenness and religious infidelity were rival meth¬ 
ods for distressing their teachers. Up at New Haven the 
Yale boys in a certain class, feeling themselves wronged by 
a certain professor, had disguised themselves as Indians and 
with long knives whittled all the study benches into shavings 
while the terrified instructor cowered on his throne and 
watched. 

Vice of every sort seemed to be the chief study of such 
of the students as were not aiming at the ministry. As one 
of the college graduates wrote : 

“Hot suppers, midnight carousals were too frequent with 
us and sowed the seed of a vice that in a few years carried 
off a fearful proportion of our members to an untimely 
grave.” 

There was grave anxiety for the morals of the whole na¬ 
tion. The city was growing too fast. By 1850 it had passed 
the half-million mark! The churches were not numerous 
enough to hold a quarter of the population, yet most of them 
were sparsely attended. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


230 

The American home was collapsing. Dr. Chirnside 
preached on the exalted cost of living, and stated that church 
weddings were on the decrease. The hotel was ruining the 
family. Rents were so exorbitant, servants so scarce and 
incompetent, that people were giving up the domesticity of 
the good old days. 

Business detained the husband downtown, and he took his 
midday dinner at Sweeny’s or Delmonico’s, where he could 
have poultry or sirloin steak for a shilling and sixpence. 
And his wife and daughters, unwilling to eat alone, went to 
Weller’s or Taylor’s and had a fricandeau, an ice, or a 
meringue. Ladies’ saloons were numerous and magnificent 
and wives could buy ready-made meals there; so they forgot 
how to cook. The care of children no longer concerned them. 
Women were losing all the retiring charm that had hitherto 
given them their divine power over men. 

The clergy bewailed the approaching collapse of a nation 
that had forgotten God—or had never remembered him. 
There was a movement afoot to amend the Constitution with 
an acknowledgment of the Deity and “take the stain of 
atheism from that all-important document.” 

These were the Sunday thoughts. 

In contrast were the Fourth of July thoughts, when the 
country sang its own hallelujahs and, like another deity, 
contentedly meditated its own perfections. On these occa¬ 
sions every American man was better than any foreigner, and 
American women were all saints. 

And there were the Election Day moods, when the country 
split up into parties for a few weeks, and played tennis with 
mutual charges of corruption, thievery, treason. Then there 
was Christmas, when everybody loved everybody; and New 
Year’s Day, when everybody called on everybody and got a 
little drunk on good wishes and the toasts that went with 
them. 

David RoBards had his personal seasons; his feast days 
and fast days in his own soul. Everybody treated him with 
respect as a man of unblemished life in a home of unsullied 
reputation. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


231 


Then Patty met him with a doleful word: 

“WeVe got to give an At Home right away. Don’t stand 
staring! WeVe gone out dozens of times and accepted no 
end of hospitality. We simply must pay our debts.” 

“I’d like to,” said RoBards. “You and Immy have run up 
so many bills at so many shops that I am almost afraid to 
walk the streets or open my mail.” 

This always enfuriated Patty and it angered her now: 

“Since you owe so much you can owe a little more. But 
we owe something to Immy. We must give a ball, and it 
must be a crack.” 

“An orgy, you mean, if it’s to be like some of the others 
we’ve gone to. Is that the most honest way to present a 
daughter to the world ?” 

“You’re getting old, Mist’ RoBards!” Patty snapped. 
“Orgies was the name poor old Papa used to call the dances 
you and I went to in our day.” 

The upshot of it was that Patty won. The choicest per¬ 
sonages in town received an Alhambra-watered envelope con¬ 
taining a notice that Mr. and Mrs. RoBards would be at 
home in St. John’s Park that evening week. Patty sent cards 
also to a number of young men whom RoBards considered far 
beneath his notice; but they were asked everywhere because 
they could and would dance the tight polka, the redowa, the 
waltz, the German; they could and would play backgammon 
and graces, write acrostics, sit in tableaux, get up serenades, 
riding parties, sleighing parties—anything to keep females 
from perishing of boredom. They all dressed correctly and 
alike, parted their hair straight down the back, posed as lost 
souls and murmured spicy hints of the terrific damnations 
they had known in Paris. Some of them lived in twenty- 
shilling-a-week boarding houses and curled each other’s hair. 

But they could and would dance instead of standing about 
like wooden Indians. Some critics said that the dancing in 
the American homes was faster and more furious than any¬ 
thing abroad, except at the masked balls in Paris where the 
girls were grisettes. 

Some of the beaux won an added prestige by their cyni- 


232 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


cism. They spoke with contempt of the sex they squired. In 
fact, everybody said that the new generation lacked the rev¬ 
erence for women that had been shown in the better days. 
Some blamed the rapidly increasing wealth of the country 
with its resultant laxity of morals; some blamed the sensa¬ 
tional novelists for their exposures of feminine frailties. 

Mr. Thackeray, an English lecturer and novelist, whose 
“Vanity Fair” had been a ruthless picture of British wicked¬ 
ness in high circles, came in for no little rebuke. 

In an article on the subject RoBards found him blamed 
for the attitude of “unfledged college boys who respect 
nothing in the shape of woman, and exult in his authority to 
throw overboard the slight remains of the traditionary rever¬ 
ence which inconveniently bridles their passions, and restrains 
their egotisms.” 

It was into such an atmosphere that the young girl Immy 
and the lad Keith must emerge from childhood. In such a 
dangerous world they must live their life. RoBards shud¬ 
dered at the menace. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


Patty had a linen cover stretched tight over the parlor 
carpet. She got in an appalling amount of supper material; 
oyster soup in gallons, dinde aux truffes by the pound, ice 
cream in gallons, jellies, custards, cakes, preserves; punch by 
the keg, and champagne bottles by the regiment. 

Everybody came. St. John’s Park was a-roar with car- , 
riages and bawling coachmen and footmen, some of them in 
livery. Tactless people set Patty’s teeth on edge by saying 
that it was well worth while coming “downtown” to see her; 
and Immy such a lady! She’d be making Patty a grand¬ 
mother any of these days! 

For a time RoBards enjoyed the thrill, the dressed-up old 
women and old men and the young people all hilarious and 
beautiful with youth. 

He had his acid tastes, too, for many of the people con¬ 
gratulated him on the reported successes of his old crony. 
Captain Chalender. He was reputed to be a millionaire at 
least, and one of the best loved men in California—and 
coming home soon, it was rumored. And was that true ? 

“So I’ve heard,” RoBards must murmur a dozen times, 
wondering how far away Chalender would have to go to be 
really absent from his home. 

The house throbbed with dance music, the clamor and 
susurrus of scandal along the wall line of matrons, the 
laughter; the eddies the dancers made; young men in black 
and pink girls in vast skirts like huge many-petaled roses 
twirled round and round. 

It amazed RoBards to see now popular Immy was. She 
was wrangled over by throngs of men. Her color was higher 
than her liquid rouge explained; her eyes were bright, and 
she spoke with an aristocratic lilt her father had never heard 
her use. 


233 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


234 

Keith was as tall and as handsome as any young blade 
there, and his father could hardly believe that the boy could 
be so gallant, so gay, so successful with so many adoring 
girls. 

It was good to see so much joy in the home he had made 
for the children whose sorrows had been so many and so real. 
But as the evening grew old and the crowd thickened, his 
cheerfulness flagged. Perhaps he was merely fatigued with 
the outgo of welcome, sickened by having to say and hear the 
same things so many times. 

But he saw the picnic becoming a revel. The dancers, 
whether waltzing or polking, seemed to increase in audacity, 
in blind or shameless abandonment to thoughts and moods 
that belonged to solitude if anywhere. 

As he wandered about he surprised couples stealing em¬ 
braces or kisses slily, or whispering guiltily, laughing with 
more than mischief. Sometimes it was Immy that he en¬ 
countered; sometimes Keith. 

What could he say or do? Nothing but pretend to be 
sightless and guileless. 

When the supper hour was reached, the rush was incred¬ 
ible. Men made a joke of the crassest behavior, and a 
chivalric pretense that they were fighting for refreshment to 
carry to their fainting ladies. But it was neither humorous 
nor knightly to spill oyster soup over a lace dress, to tilt ice 
cream down a broadcloth back, or to grind fallen custard into 
the expensive carpet. 

It was not pretty to empty the dregs of somebody’s else 
champagne into the oyster tureen or under the table, and 
while refilling the glass let the wine froth all over the table 
cover. 

Many of the squires forgot their dames and drank them¬ 
selves into states of truculence, or, worse, of odious nausea. 
RoBards had to convey two young gentlemen of better family 
than breeding up to the hatroom to sleep off their liquor; and 
he had to ask some of the soberer youth to help him run 
one sudden fiend out to the sidewalk and into a carriage. 

While RoBards was spreading one of his young guests out 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


235 

on a bed upstairs, another knocked over the cutglass punch¬ 
bowl and cracked it irretrievably, together with a dozen en¬ 
graved straw-stem glasses Patty’s father had left to her. 

When the German began at about midnight some of the 
men dared to carry champagne bottles with them and set 
them down by their chairs for reference during the pauses 
in the figures. 

Ho$ts and hostesses were supposed to ignore the miscon¬ 
duct of their guests, but it made RoBards’ blood run cold 
to see Immy go from the arms of a decent respectful sober 
youth into the arms and the liquorous embrace of a drunken 
faun Whom she had to support. 

He ventured to whisper a protest to her once. But she 
answered: 

“Papa! don’t be ridiculous! A girl can’t discriminate. 
I can’t hurt a poor boy’s feelings just because he can’t carry 
his liquor as well as the rest. Besides, I’m the hostess.” 

Her father cast his eyes up in helplessness at such a creed. 

But even Immy and Patty could not ignore the ill for¬ 
tune of Barbara Salem, whose partner was so tipsy that he 
reeled her into a handsome buhl escritoire and broke the 
glass door with Barbara’s head, then fell with her to the 
floor and gaped while the blood from her slashed brow ran 
through her hair and over her white shoulders and her white 
dress and soaked through the linen cover into the carpet 
beneath. 

Old Mr. and Mrs. Salem were aghast at the family calam¬ 
ity, while the young man wept himself almost sober with 
remorse. Keith’s coat was stained with red as he carried 
Barbara upstairs to a bedroom to wait for the doctor. 

In the ladies’ dressing-room, which Keith had to invade, 
two young women had already fainted; both from tight 
stays, they said. One of them was half undressed and un¬ 
lacing her corsets with more wisdom than her heavy eyes 
indicated. 

Immy put Keith out and ministered to the casualties. 

But the dance went on. Some old prudes were shocked, 


236 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

but the rest said, “A party is a party, and accidents will 
happen.” 

Dear old Mrs. Piccard said to Patty: 

“You’re lucky in having only two carpets ruined, my 
dear. I had three destroyed at my last reception. But it’s 
nothing to what went on in the good old days, if the truth 
were told. My father was with General Washington, you 

know. And really-! Papa was with the army that night 

when General Washington himself danced with General 
Greene’s wife for three hours without sitting down. Those 
were the heroic days, my dear! And drinking! Our young 
men are comparatively abstemious.” 

Finally the more merciful guests began to go home, leaving 
the dregs behind. Young men who would doze and make 
mistakes at the counting houses the next day, lingered as if 
it were the last night of earth. 

There was torture for Robards in Immy’s zest, in the look 
of her eyes as she stared up into the unspeakable gaze of 
some notorious rake; and in the welding of her sacred body 
to his in a matrimonial embrace as they waltzed round and 
round giddily. Yet how much bitterer a wound it was to 
see her transfer herself for the next dance to another man 
and pour up into his fatuous eyes the same look of helpless 
passion! 

The performance repeated in a third man’s bosom was 
confusion. RoBards had either to turn on his heel or com¬ 
mit murder. And he really could not murder all the young 
men whom Immy maddened. Indeed, he was not sufficiently 
satisfied with his first murder to repeat the experiment. 

Yet Immy kept her head through it all; flirted, plotted, 
showed the ideal Arabian hospitality in her dances. But 
no one made a fool of her. 

Keith, however, was overwhelmed. It was his first ex¬ 
perience with unlimited champagne, and he had thought it 
his duty to force it on his guests and join them in every 
glass. It was disgraceful to leave a heeltap. When he could 
no longer stand up or dance, he had to be carried upstairs* 
moaning, “It’s a shame to deshert guesh.” 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 237 

A boy and drunk! And weeping, not for being drunk but 
for not being the last man drunk! 

The world was ready for the Deluge! The American 
nation was rotten to the core and would crumble at the first 
test. 

This dance at the RoBards home was typical, rather more 
respectable than many. All over town dances were held in 
dance halls where the middle classes went through the same 
gyrations with less grace, and in the vile dens of the Five 
Points where all were swine. 

Patty was too tired to speak or listen when the last guest 
was gone. She could hardly keep awake long enough to get 
out of her gown. 

She sighed: “I’m old! I’m ready to admit it. I’m 
glad I’m old. I’m never going to try to pretend again! I 
don’t want ever to be so tired again. If anybody wakes me 
to-morrow I’ll commit murder. In God’s name, will you 
never get those stay-laces untied?” 

RoBards drew out a knife and slashed them and they 
snapped like violin strings, releasing the crowded flesh. 

Patty groaned with delight and peeling off her bodice 
stepped out of the petticoats and kicked them across the 
floor. She spent a while voluptuously rubbing her galled 
sides; then lifted her nightgown and let it cascade about her, 
and fell into bed like a young tree coming down. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


THE rest of the family might sleep its fill on the morrow, 
but RoBards had to go to court. Getting himself out of 
bed was like tearing his own meat from his bones. He could 
hardly flog his body and mind to the task. If it had not been 
for the new shower bath the Croton River brought to his 
rescue, he could never have achieved it. 

The house looked positively obscene in the morning light, 
with the wreckage of the festival, and no music or laughter 
to redeem it. Cuff and Teen were sullen with sleepiness and 
the prospect of extra toil. They emphasized the fact that 
the dining-room carpet was too sticky and messy for en¬ 
durance. RoBards’ breakfast was served on the drawing¬ 
room table. 

He went to court to try a case for a strange old female 
miser whose counsel he had been for many years. They 
called her the shrewdest business man in town and she 
laughed at the fact that she was not considered fit to vote, 
though the Revolutionary War had been fought because of 
the crime of “taxation without representation.” 

“Now that they’ve thrown away the property qualifica¬ 
tions, every Tom, Dick, and Harry can vote as often as he’s 
a mind to. But I can’t. Every thieving politician can load 
taxes on my property to get money to steal. But I have no 
say. My husband was a drunkard and a fool and a liber¬ 
tine, and I brought him all the property he ever had. He 
used it as an excuse for voting and I couldn’t even go to 
court in my own protection for the law says, ‘Husband and 
wife are one and the husband is the one.’ 

“The minute he died, I became a human being again, thank 
God. But I have to have a man for a lawyer and men to 
judge my cases. The lamb has to have a wolf for a lawyer 

238 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


239 

and plead before a bench of wolves. But I will say, you’re 
as honest a wolf as ever I knew.” 

If anything could have destroyed RoBards’ faith in ex¬ 
clusively white, male suffrage it would have been old Mrs. 
Roswell. But nothing could shake that tradition, and he 
accounted her an exception that proved the rule. 

While he dealt with her professionally as if she were one 
of the shrewd old merchants of New York, he treated her 
personally with all the courtesy he displayed for more gentle 
females, and she was woman enough to love that. 

Miser that she was, she made him take higher fees than 
he ordinarily charged, and they saved him again and again 
from despair in the face of the increasing expense of his 
home. 

In her desperate eagerness to fight off retirement from 
the ranks of youth, Patty relied more and more on the dress¬ 
makers and hat-makers. She developed a passion for 
jewelry and she spent great sums at the Daguerrean galleries. 

She would sit in frozen poses for six minutes at a time, 
trying to obtain a plate that would flatter her sufficiently. 
But her beauty was in her expression and especially in its 
fleetness, and the miracle of Daguerre was helpless. The 
mist that clothed Niagara in a veil of grace was not itself 
when winter made it ice. And Patty’s soul, so sweet and 
captivating as it flitted about her eyes and lips, became 
another soul when it must shackle itself and die. 

Only a few colors were advantageous in the new process 
and those were the least happy in Patty’s rainbow. Yet 
she dressed and fixed her smiles and endured the agony of 
feeling a compelled laughter curdle into an inane smirk. 
And she would weep with hatred of her counterfeit present¬ 
ment when it came home from Brady’s or Insley’s or 
Gurney’s. 

Immy fared little better there for all her youth. And her 
costliness increased appallingly, for she must keep pace with 
the daughters of wealth. When she went shabby it reflected 
on her father’s love or his success, and Patty could stifle his 
fiercest protest by simply murmuring: 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


240 

“Hasn’t the poor child suffered enough without having 
to be denied the common necessities of a well-bred girl?” 

This stung RoBards into prodigies of extravagance, and 
Immy’s wildest recklessness took on the pathos of a fright¬ 
ened child fleeing from vultures of grief. 

He could not even protest when he saw that she was tak¬ 
ing up the disgusting vice of “dipping.” Snuff-taking had 
lost its vogue among the beaux, and only the elders preferred 
it to smoking tobacco. 

But now the women and girls were going mad over it. 
In the pockets of their skirts they carried great horn snuff¬ 
boxes filled with the strongest Scottish weed. Stealing away 
from the sight of men, they would spread a handkerchief 
over their laps, open the boxes, and dipping the odious mix¬ 
ture on a little hickory mop, fill their pretty mouths with 
it and rub it on their teeth. They seemed to take some 
stimulus from the stuff, and the secrecy of it added a final 
tang. 

All the men were arrayed against it, but their wrath gave 
it the further charm of defiant wickedness. 

What was getting into the women ? They would not obey 
anybody. Since Eve had mocked God and had desired only 
the one forbidden fruit, they seemed determined to enjoy 
only what was fatal. 

And the books they read! RoBards came home one even¬ 
ing to find Immy in tears and Patty storming about her like 
a fury. When he intervened Patty said: 

“Would you see what I caught this child devouring! Sit¬ 
ting with the gas blinding her and her eyes popping over this 
terrible story by somebody named Hawthorne. The title 
alone is enough to make a decent girl run from it. The Scar¬ 
let Letter. Do you know what the letter was and what 
it stood for?” 

RoBards shook his head. He did not read light, popular 
fiction. The affidavits he handled were fiction enough for 
him. 

Patty drew him into another room and whispered the plot 
of the story. RoBards gathered that it had to do with a 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


241 

Puritan minister who had a secret affair with the wife of 
an absent citizen, and with the child that resulted in the 
mother's very proper appearance in the pillory. 

“They ought to put the author there and sew a letter on 
his lapel." Patty raged. “No wonder the people of Salem 
put him out of office and drove him out of town." 

There had been an article in the Church Review about the 
book. Patty fetched it and read a few lines to RoBards: 

“Is the French era actually begun in our literature? We 
wonder what he would be at: whether he is making fun of all 
religion. Shelley himself never imagined a more dissolute 
conversation than that in which the polluted minister com¬ 
forts himself with the thought that the revenge of the in¬ 
jured husband is worse than his own sin in instigating it. 

. . . The lady’s frailty is philosophized into a natural and 
easy result of the Scriptural law of marriage." 

That his daughter should read of such things sent a cold 
thrill into RoBards’ heart. He forgot that she had no in¬ 
nocence to destroy. Jud Lasher had wrecked that. Ernest 
Chirnside had rejected her for its lack. And he himself 
had watched her dance. 

But the printed word had a peculiar damnation. He knew 
that wickedness was rife everywhere about him. He knew 
that Immy knew it, for the gossip was everywhere like the 
atmosphere. The newspapers blazoned it. The courthouses 
solemnized it. 

Yet to print it in a story seemed infamous. And Patty 
added: 

“I found her crying over it! Crying her heart out over 
that woman and her brat! What can we do to save that 
child?" 

“Ah, what can we do," RoBards groaned, “to save 
ourselves ?” 

There was something in his look that checked Patty’s ire, 
made her blench, shiver, and walk away. Perhaps she was 
thinking of—of what RoBards dared not remember. 

That night RoBards was wakened from sleep by a be¬ 
wildering dream of someone sobbing. He woke and heard 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


242 

sobs. They had invaded his slumber and coerced the dream. 

He sat up and looked about. Patty undressed and freez¬ 
ing had glanced into the purloined romance; and it had 
fastened on her. She was weeping over Hester Prynne and 
her child Pearl, and Dimmesdale, the wretched partner in 
their expiation. 

When Robards drowsily asked what had made her cry, 
she sat on the edge of his bed and read to him. Whether it 
were the contagion of her grief or the skill of the author, 
he felt himself driven almost to tears. He flung a blanket 
about Patty’s quivering shoulders and clung to her, wonder¬ 
ing at this mystery of the world: that lovers long dead in 
obscurity, and lovers who had never lived at all, should be 
made to walk so vividly through the landscapes of imagina¬ 
tion that thousands of strangers should weep for them. 

Or was it for their woes that one wept? Or for one’s 
own in the masquerade of other names and scenes? 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


XHE tenderest moods of devotion and shared sorrows 
alternated with wrangles so bitter that murder seemed to 
hang in the air. Money was the root of most of the 
quarreling. 

When RoBards was about ready to give up and sink like 
a broken-backed camel under the incessant rain of last 
straws, there came a wind out of heaven and lifted the bills 
like petals swept from a peach tree. 

Old Mrs. Roswell was found dead in her bed one morn¬ 
ing. RoBards grieved for the poor old skinflint, and won¬ 
dered how he would get along without her fees. 

Then her last will was turned up and in it she bequeathed 
to him ten thousand dollars in gold and a parcel of land 
which she had bought in when it was sold for taxes. It 
lay out beyond the Reservoir on Murray’s Hill, an aban¬ 
doned farm. 

But he had hopes that it would one day prove of value, 
for there was talk of grading Fifth Avenue from Thirty- 
fourth Street out to Forty-fifth. And the World’s Fair 
which had been opened on July 4, 1852, in the magnificent 
Crystal Palace built next the Reservoir, taught the public 
that Forty-second Street was not quite the North Pole. And 
though it was a failure it had revealed the charm of this 
region. There was, indeed, a movement on foot to create 
a great park out there to be called Central Park. That 
would involve the purchase of the land by the city. The 
“Forty Thieves,” as the aldermen were called, would pay 
enough for it to leave themselves a tidy sum. 

But RoBards was to learn that windfalls from heaven 
bring no permanent rescue. Patty was incensed at the 
thought of devoting any of that unforeseen ten thousand 

243 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


244 

dollars to the payment of bills for worn-out dresses and 
extravagances of the past. 

She had given a ball for Immy on her nineteenth birth¬ 
day in the desperate hope that the girl would capture a hus¬ 
band before she began to fade, but though there were lovers 
enough, none of them seemed to account her a sufficiently 
attractive match. 

And this was emphasized as a further proof of RoBards’ 
failure as a father. All the summer of 1853 Patty com¬ 
plained of the smallness of the house at Tuliptree. The 
children required separate rooms. They had guests and 
there was no place to put them. When Immy had two 
visitors, and one of his college friends came out to spend 
a week with Keith, the two boys had to clear a room in the 
hayloft. They made a lark of it, but it humiliated Patty, 
and she swore she would never go back to the place until 
RoBards added a wing to it. 

To add a wing would mean the opening of the founda¬ 
tion and the demolition of the chimney, and the thought 
terrified RoBards. He had grown so used to the presence 
of Jud Lasher there that only some unexpected proposal 
of this sort wakened him to the eternal danger of a revelation 
all the more horrible for its delay. 

Patty found so many places for the spending of his ten 
thousand that she could decide on none. 

But the politicians smelled his money and he was visited 
by an affable ward-heeler with a suggestion that he accept 
a nomination for a judgeship in the Superior Court. 

Though RoBards was revolted at the thought of receiving 
the ermine from hands soiled with such dirty money, his 
heart longed for the dignity of a judgeship, and he knew 
that he could never attain the bench without the consent 
of the politicians. Once aloft he could purify the means by 
the purity of his decisions. 

So he gave his consent and promised to contribute the 
necessary funds for the campaign. And that fall he won 
the election. On January first he was to mount the throne. 

Patty made all manner of fun of her politician, but she 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


245 

took pride in his victory and thenceforth began to call him 
“Judge.” It was a change from the ancient “Mister 
RoBards,” a little less distant, a little more respectful. 

But RoBards noted that Immy seemed indifferent to his 
success or his failure. She pretended enthusiasm over his 
election, but her smile died almost before it was born. She 
was distraught, petulant, swift to anger and prompt to tears. 
She wept at nothing. 

She took no delight even in gayety. She refused to go 
to dances. She denied herself to callers. 

Even when snow came and brought what foreigners called 
“the American pastime known as sleighing,” and the bells 
thrilled the muffled streets with fairy jubilation, she kept the 
house. 

But the mere hint of calling in a doctor threw her into 
spasms of protest. 

One evening when the winter night overlapped the aft¬ 
ernoon there came a tempest of sleet and snow and RoBards 
had to call a hack to take him home from the office. He 
was lashed as with a cat-o’-nine tails when he ran from the 
curb to his door. 

And when he entered the hall in a flurry of sleet, Patty 
said to him: 

“We’ve got to go up to Tuliptree at once—to-morrow.” 

“Why ? what for ? for how long ?” 

“I don’t know for how long, but we must lose no time 
in getting Immy out of town.” 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


ANOTHER exodus. But they were scapegoats now, flee¬ 
ing into the wilderness with a mystic burden of guilt, anony¬ 
mous guilt; for Immy would not speak. 

Complete was the contrast between that first flight from 
the cholera and this fleeing where no man pursued, but all 
men waited. 

Then David and Patty RoBards were part of a stampede, 
striving to save their romance from the plague. Then they 
were bride and groom; now they carried with them a daugh¬ 
ter, unforeseen then, but older to-day than her mother was 
when she married RoBards. But Immy’s bridegroom was 
where?—was who? 

In that other journey to Tuliptree Farm the streets were 
smothered with dust and the waterless city stifled under 
a rainless sky. 

Now water was everywhere. The fountains were still, 
but the pipes underground were thick as veins and arteries. 
Water in the form of snow lay on the ground, on the roofs, 
on the shoulders of the men, on their eyelashes, on the 
women’s veils and in their hair and the feathers of their 
hats. It lay in long ridges on the backs of the horses plung¬ 
ing, slipping, falling. It plastered the panes of the lamp- 
posts and the telegraph-posts that had grown up in a new 
forest all over town; it lay along the wires that strung 
spider webs from wall and chimney and tree. 

The banners that hung from all the shops and stretched 
across the street were illegible. The busses and the hacks 
were moving dunes of white. 

There was a fog of snow. Everybody walked mincingly, 
except the children, who rejoiced to slide on their brass¬ 
toed boots or on the sleds that ran like great, prong-horned 
beetles among the legs of the anxious wayfarers. 

246 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


247 

The RoBards trio was glad of the snow, for it gave con¬ 
cealment. Immy was silent, morose, and with reason enough. 
If ever a soul had the right to cry out against the unfair¬ 
ness, the malice of heaven, it was Immy. She could have 
used the bitter words of Job: 

“He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. . . . He will 
laugh at the trial of the innocent.” 

She did not feel innocent. She felt worse than wicked; 
she felt a fool. But other people had been fools and vicious 
fools and no one learned of it. She had been wicked and 
foolish before without punishment; with reward rather, 
laughter, rapture, escape. Now for a flash of insane weak¬ 
ness this sudden, awful, eternal penalty. 

To her father and mother speech was impossible, thought 
almost forbidden. If they had been taking Immy’s dead 
body up to a Westchester burial, they could hardly have felt 
more benumbed. Only, if she had been dead, the problem 
of her future would have been God’s. Now it was theirs. 

The gamble of it was that they could not foreknow the 
result of this journey; whether it would mean one more 
life, or one death, or two. 

In any case, RoBards must hasten back to his legal duties 
as soon as he had placed Immy on the farm. Patty must 
stay and share the jail sentence with her for—how long, 
who could tell? 

At the railroad station they met friends, but satisfied 
them with a word about the charm of the country in the 
winter. The train ploughed bravely through snow that 
made a white tunnel of the whole distance. The black smoke 
writhing in the vortex of writhing white seemed to RoBards 
to express something of his own thoughts. 

Travelers by rail usually expected death. Not long since, 
a train on the Baltimore and Ohio had turned four somer¬ 
saults in a hundred-foot fall with frightful loss of life, and 
at Norwalk, Connecticut, a while ago, forty-four people had 
been slaughtered and a hundred and thirty mangled. But 
RoBards felt that such a solution of his own riddles would 
be almost welcome. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


248 

Suddenly Patty leaned close to him and brought him down 
to realities. She muttered: 

“You must get the Albesons off the farm, somehow.” 

“How?” 

“I don’t know. You’re a lawyer. Think up something. 
They must not stay there. They must not suspect. They 
know too much as it is.” 

“All right,” he sighed. He realized the shrewdness of 
her wisdom, but the problem she posed dazed him. 

The rest of the way he beat his thought on an anvil, 
turning and twisting it and hammering till his brain seemed 
to turn red in his skull. 

What simpler thing than to ask them to leave his farm? 
But they were such simple souls that they would be as hard 
to manage as sheep. And they must be sent away for a long 
time. He and Patty and Immy must manage without a serv¬ 
ant. But no sacrifice was too great. 

The train ran all the way to Kensico now. Here they en¬ 
countered trouble in finding someone to drive them over the 
unbroken roads, but at length they bribed a man to under¬ 
take the voyage. 

The horses picked their way with insect-like motions, and 
went so slowly that the bells snapped and clinked instead 
of jingling. The runners of the sleigh mumbled and left 
long grooves in the white. 

The rain of flakes upon the eyelids had the effect of a 
spell; it was like this new thing everybody was talking about, 
“hypnotism,” a mere disguise for the worn-out fraud of 
mesmerism. 

Surging along in a state betwixt sleep and waking, Ro- 
Bards’ mind fell into a singsong of babble. 

Every man has in him at least one poem and RoBards, 
like most of his profession, had a love of exalted words. 
He lacked the magniloquence of Webster (whose recent 
death had swathed most of New York’s buildings in black) ; 
but he could not resist even in a foreclosure proceeding or 
the most sordid criminal case an occasional flight into the 
realm betwixt prose and poesy. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


249 

And now he lulled himself with an inchoate apostrophe to 
the snow: 

“O Snow! O down from what vast swan-breast torn? 
from what vast swan-breast torn, to flutter, to flutter through 
the air and—and—What swan, then, was it ? is it ? that died, 
that dies in silence, in grief more like a song than—than 
silence: a song that has—that knows—that finds no words, 
no tune, no melody, no tune; but only feeling, ecstatic 
anguish, despair that faints, that droops, that swoons, and 
lies as meek, as white, as white, as still as marble. O Snow, 
thou quell’st—O Snow that quells the world, the countless 
sorrows of the world, the plaints, the hungers, shames, to 
one calm mood, one White. O Peace! O flawless Peace! 
This snow must be the drifting plumage from the torn wide 
wings, the aching breast of heaven’s own dove, the Holy 
Ghost.” 

He was as lost in his shredded rhythms as in the snow; 
as muffled in himself as in the heavy robe and his great¬ 
coat, and his thick cap. He had not yet thought of a way 
to exile the Albesons. He had surrendered himself as 
utterly to the weather as the hills themselves. The road 
was gone, the walls rubbed out, the trees were but white 
mushrooms. Everything was smoothed and rounded and 
numbed. Immy and her mother were snowed under and 
never spoke. Even the driver made no sound except an 
occasional chirrup or a lazy, “Git ap there!” 

Then they were suddenly at Tuliptree. The snow had 
blurred the landmarks, and the driver had to wade thigh- 
deep to reach the gate, and excavate a space to swing it 
open. 

The Albesons had neither seen nor heard them come, and 
the pounding on the door and the stamping of feet gave them 
their first warning. 

They were so glad of the end of their solitude, and put 
to such a scurry to open bedrooms and provide fires and 
supper, that they had little time for questions beyond, 
“Haow air ye all, anyway?” “Haow’ve ye ben?” “Haow’s 
all the rest of the folks?” “Did ye ever see sich snow?” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


250 

Mrs. Albeson embraced Immy with a reminiscent pity, and 
praised her for putting on flesh and not looking like the 
picked chicken most the girls looked like nowadays. 

This gave RoBards his first idea and he spoke briskly: 

“She’s not so well as she looks. Too much gayety in the 
city. Doctor says she’s got to have complete rest and quiet. 
Mrs. RoBards and I are pretty well worn out, too; so we 
decided just to cut and run. Besides, I didn’t like to leave 
the farm alone all winter.” 

“Alone all winter ?” Albeson echoed. “Ain’t we here ?” 

“That’s what I came up to see you about. I have a client 
who lent a big sum of money on a Georgia plantation, slaves 
and crops and all. He’s afraid he’s been swindled—afraid 
the land’s no good—wants an honest opinion from somebody 
that knows soil when he sees it. So I’m sending you. And 
I’m sending your wife along to keep you out of mischief.” 

“But Georgia! Gosh, that’s a million miles, ain’t it?” 

“It’s nothing. You get the railroad part of the way. And 
it’s like summer down there.” 

The farmer and his wife and Patty and Immy all stared 
at RoBards, and he felt as if he were staring at himself. 

The odd thing about it was that the inspiration had come 
to him while he was on his feet talking. He thought best 
on his feet talking. That was his native gift and his legal 
practice had developed it. 

While he had sat in the train and in the sleigh and cudg¬ 
eled his wits, nothing happened. Yet all the while there 
was indeed a client of his anxious about a remote invest¬ 
ment; he only remembered him when he began to talk. 
The gigantic swindle known as the Pine Barren speculation 
had sold to innocent dupes in the North thousands of acres 
of land that was worthless, and hundreds of thousands of 
acres that did not even exist. The result was pitiful hard¬ 
ship for hard-working, easy-believing immigrants and a bad 
name for legitimate Georgian transactions. 

The Albesons were more afraid of this expedition into 
the unknown than if they had been asked to join the vain 
expedition Mr. Grinnell, the merchant, had recently sponsored 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


251 

to search the Arctic Zone for Sir John Franklin and his lost 
crew. 

But RoBards forced his will upon theirs and after a 
day or two of bullying carried the two old babes to New 
York and across the ferry and put them on a New Jersey 
Railroad train. They would reach Washington in less than 
sixteen hours—and by turning down the backs of two seats, 
could stretch out and sleep while the train ran on. From 
Washington they could go alternately by stage and rail all 
the way. This was indeed the Age of Steam. There were 
thirteen thousand miles of railroad in operation! 

And now RoBards had exiled the two most dangerous 
witnesses—at appalling financial cost. But if it saved Immy 
from bankruptcy, it was an investment in destiny. RoBards 
had nothing more to do but wait, tell lies to those who asked 
where he had hidden his wife and daughter, and wonder 
what might be the outcome of all this conspiracy. 

In the meanwhile he was installed as Judge, and Patty 
was not there to see. Keith was in Columbia and much 
puzzled by the absence of his mother and sister, and his 
father’s restlessness. 

On one of RoBards’ visits to Tuliptree, Patty said with 
a dark look and a hesitant manner: 

“David, I’ve been thinking.” 

That word “David” made him lift his head with eagerness. 
She went on: 

“You remember how good Doctor Matson was when 
poor Papa died? How he helped us conceal the terrible 
truth? I was wondering—don’t you suppose if you asked 
him now—he always liked Immy, you know—and—if you 
appealed to him-” 

RoBards groaned aloud with horror. 

“Hush! in God’s name! Would you ask a judge to com¬ 
pound a felony? to connive at murder?” 

“Oh,” Patty sighed, “I forgot. You used to be a father, 
and now you are a judge.” 

The little laugh that rattled in her throat was the most 
bloodcurdling sound he had ever heard. 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


252 

Its mockery of his ignoble majesty pursued him every¬ 
where he went. He heard it when he sat on the bench and 
glowered down at the wretches who came before him with 
their pleading counselors. It made a vanity of all dignity, 
of justice. And what was “justice” indeed, but a crime 
against the helpless? First, their passions swept them into 
deeds they did not want to commit; then other men seized 
them and added disgrace to remorse. 

Which was the higher duty—the father’s to fight the 
world for his young? Or the judge’s to defend an imaginary 
ideal against the laws of mercy? 

His soul was in utter disarray and he found only shame 
whichever way he turned. He went back to the country 
perplexed to a frenzy. 

Patty greeted him with such a look as a sick she-wolf 
would give the mate that slunk about the den where her 
young were whimpering. She would not let him see his 
daughter. 

He retreated to his library and was too dispirited to build 
a fire. He stood in the bitter cold and stared through a 
frost-film at the forlorn moon freezing in a steel-blue sky 
above an ice-encrusted world. 

He was shaken from his torpor by a cry, a lancinating 
shriek, by cry upon cry. He ran like a man shot full of 
arrows, but the door was locked and Patty called to him to 
go away. 

He leaned against the wall, useless, inane, while his child 
babbled and screamed, then only moaned and was silent a 
while, then screamed anew, and was silent again. 

Agony rose and ebbed in her like a quick storm-tide, and 
he knew that the old hag Nature, the ruthless midwife, was 
rending and twisting her and rejoicing, laughing triumphantly 
at every throe. He wondered why he had made no arrange¬ 
ments for Immy to be anaesthetized. It was too late now. 

This was that holy mystery, that divine crisis for which 
she was born. He had endured the same torture when Immy 
was born. But then there was pride and boasting as the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 253 

recompense; now, the publication of shame, the branding, 
the scarlet A, and the pillory. 

Then the nurse had beamed upon him as she placed in 
his arms for a moment the blessing of heaven. 

Now, after a maddening delay, Patty would doubtless 
come to the door and thrust upon him a squirming blanketful 
of noisy misery and of lifelong disgrace. 

He began to drift like a prisoner in a cell. Patty would 
not let him in and he would have been afraid to enter. He 
went back to his library as an old horse returns to its stall 
from habit. He paced the floor and stood at the window, 
guiltily observing the road to see if anyone had heard the 
clamor and were coming in to ask if murder were being 
done. 

But no one moved. Even the shadows were still, frozen 
to the snow. Not an owl hunted; not a field mouse scuttered. 
The moon seemed not to budge. She was but a spot of 
glare ice on a sky tingling with stars. 

The room was dead with old air. Yet his brow burned. 
He flung up the window and gulped the fresh wind that 
flowed in. The jar of the casement shook down snow and 
it sifted across the sill to the carpet. 

On his sleeve a few flakes rested and did not melt. Their 
patterns caught his attention. The wonder of snow engaged 
his idle mind. 

The air had been clear. And then suddenly there was 
snow. Out of nothing these little masterworks of crystal 
jewelry had been created, infinitesimal architecture beyond 
the skill of the Venetian glass-spinners or the Turkish weav¬ 
ers of silver. 

And now the flakes were blinking out, back into noth¬ 
ingness. 

The snow had come from nowhere in armies. Each flake 
was an entity, unlike any other flake. And then the air 
had recalled it! 

This baby that was arriving was but another snowflake. 
It would come from nowhere—or from where? Whither 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


254 

would it go if it died? For die it must, sooner or later. 
Invisible, visible, invisible! 

What was the soul? what was the body? Who decreed 
these existences? How could any imaginable god find the 
time, the patience, the interest to build every snowflake, 
sketch every leaf, decide the race, the hue, the figure of every 
animal, bird in egg, child in woman? 

Was it to be a girl or a boy that Immy would produce? 
No one could know in advance. Yet it meant everything 
to the soul crowded into the body. 

If this human snowflake had been taken from a waiting 
multitude of unborn angels, why had God sentenced this 
particular soul to life imprisonment in this particular child 
of dishonor? What mischief had it done in heaven to be 
sentenced to earth? Could it be true, as Dr. Chirnside 
preached, that this soul had been elected from the beginning 
of the world to unending damnation or unending rapture for 
the “glory” of God? What a fearful idea of glory! The 
worst Hun in history, the most merciless inquisitor, had 
never equaled that scheme of “glory.” 

Who was the human father of this child-to-be? And what 
share had he himself in it? The helpless grandfather of 
a helpless grandchild! Why would Immy not tell the 
father’s name? Perhaps she did not know! This thought 
was too loathsome to endure. Yet how could one unthink 
a thought that has drifted into his mind like a snowflake 
from nowhere? 

Why should the father of the child not even be aware of 
its birth, when the howling mother must be squeezed as if 
she were run through a clothes-wringer ? 

Two thousand children were born dead every year in 
New York—such a strange long procession to the ceme¬ 
teries ! They were washed up on the shores of life, like the 
poor little victims of the Children’s Crusade who set out 
for Christ’s tomb and drowned in armies. 

If Immy’s baby could only be born dead what a solution 
of all problems! But it would splutter and kick, mewl and 
puke, and make itself a nuisance to every sense. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


255 

And if the child died, where would it go? To hell if it 
were not baptized first. That was sure, if anything were 
sure. Yet if it were not of the elect it would go there 
anyway, in spite of any baptism, any saintliness of its life. 

If it lived, it would join the throng of illegitimate children. 
Of these there were a thousand a year born in New York 
alone. What a plague of vermin! 

And what would its future be? It might become a thief, 
a murderer. It might be sentenced to death for crime. 

If RoBards continued his career as a judge, he would 
have many death sentences to pass. His own grandchild 
might come before him some day. 

What if he should sentence it to death now ? In the good 
old times of the patria potestas a father could destroy an 
unworthy child without punishment. Judge RoBards’ 
jurisdiction as a grandfather was doubly authentic. By one 
curt act he could protect his daughter from endless misery 
and frustration, and protect the world from this anonymous 
intruder and protect this poor little waif from the monstrous 
cruelty of the world. 

This snowflake ought to go back to the invisible. Its 
existence was God’s crime against his child. Yet he could 
be a god himself and by the mere tightening of his fingers 
about that little wax-doll throat, fling it back at God, re¬ 
jected, broken—a toy that he refused to play with. 

He owed this act to Immy. He had brought her into 
the world. He loved her. He must save her from being 
enveloped in the curse of this world’s hell. Let the next 
hell wait. 

If God wanted to punish him for it forever—why, what 
of that? He had committed one murder already and was 
already damned, no doubt. And even God could not in¬ 
crease infinite torment or multiply eternity. 

He laughed at the infernal mathematics of that conceit. 
He felt as haughty as Lucifer challenging Jehovah. Yes, 
he would force his way into that birth chamber and do his 
terrible duty. 

The onset of this madness set him in motion. He had 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


256 

not realized how long he had stood still before that open 
window and that bleak white desert, where it was too cold 
to snow, too cold for a wind—a grim cold like a lockjaw. 

When he turned to pace the floor, his legs were mere 
crutches; his feet stump-ends. It hurt to walk. He stood 
still and thought again. 

Yes, yes! All he had to do was to close his hand upon 
that tiny windpipe. It would be no more than laying hold 
of a pen and signing a warrant of arrest, a warrant of 
death. The same muscles, the same gesture. It would not 
be murder, simply an eviction—dispossess proceedings against 
an undesirable tenant, a neighbor that would not keep the 
peace. 

He would cheat the newspapers of what they called their 
rights; but God knew they had enough scandal to print 
without advertising his family name. The gossips would 
lose one sweetmeat; but they never stopped yapping. He 
would not let the men in the clubs call his grandchild a 
bastard and his daughter a—the word was vomit to his 
throat. 

With one delicate act of his good right hand he could 
rescue Immy from a lifetime of skulking; save at the same 
time this poor little, innocent, doomed petitioner from slink¬ 
ing crying down the years. He could save Patty from a 
lifetime of obloquy and humiliation. He could save his own 
name, his ancestors, his posterity, and the integrity of this 
old house—all by one brief contraction of his fingers. 

With a groan of joy in the magnificence of this supernal 
opportunity to be a man, a father, a god, he rehearsed the 
gesture, put his hand to the imaginary baby’s throat. 

He drove his will into his fingers. But they could not 
bend. His hand was frozen. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


o NLY now that he tried to use his hands and found them 
without hinges or feeling did he realize how cold he had 
been. 

Pain began in him, and fear. He had endured a stealthily 
creeping paralysis and when he heard Patty’s step, he was 
almost afraid to speak lest his words come forth brittle and 
fall breaking on the floor. 

He turned in slow, thudding steps. Patty shivered in the 
frigid air and hitched her shawl about her, tucking in her 
hands as she scolded: 

“What on earth! The window open! Are you mad?” 

No answer came from RoBards. His brain might as well 
have been snow. He stood holding out his hands as if they 
were something dead. Patty ran to him and seizing his 
fingers cried out in pain at them. He was alive, he could be 
hurt. She began to chafe his fingers in hers, to blow on 
them with her warm breath. She ran to the window and 
raising it scooped up a double handful of snow and wrapped 
it about his hands. Snow was warm to him, but bitter cold 
to her little palms. She was warm and soft where she 
touched him. She bustled about for cold water to pour on 
his hands, for anything that could save them. She sought 
for warm thoughts to keep her world from icy inanition. 

“I hate people who say that terrible things are for the 
best. But maybe this is, for once. The baby—the poor little 
baby—I was alone and I was so busy taking care of Immy, 
that I—I forgot till it was too late to—to ” 

RoBards groaned: “You don’t mean that the baby is 
dead?” 

If Patty had looked away with shame he would have felt 
that she felt guilty of a cruel negligence, but she stared 

257 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


258 

straight into his eyes. She seemed almost to lean on his 
eyes. And so he felt that she was defying him to accuse 
her of what she had done. 

He dared not take the dare. Then she began with sus¬ 
picious garrulity: 

“Maybe it was God that took the baby back. He has 
solved our problem. If the poor little thing had lived— 
think! But now! It’s too bad, but—well, Immy’s a girl 
again. And nobody knows, nobody knows! Nobody need 
ever know.” 

But they were not rid of the baby yet. It waited on the 
sill of their decision. Its body, built in secret with so much 
mystic care and borne with such agony, was empty, but as 
inescapable as an abandoned house. 

The little house must be removed from the landscape 
it dominated, before the neighbors grew aware of its 
presence. 

While RoBards dully tried to set his thought-machinery 
going, Patty murmured: 

‘Til have to tell Immy. She is too weak to wonder yet. 
She’ll carry on terribly, but it can’t be helped. And she’ll 
be glad all the rest of her days. But where shall we—what 
can we do with the baby now?” 

“Huh?” gasped RoBards. “Oh, yes, what can we do 
with the—yes, that is the question, what can we do? We’ve 
got to do something.” 

But that could wait. Immy was faintly moaning, “Mam¬ 
ma! Mamma!” Patty ran to her. RoBards followed and 
bent to kiss the wrung-out wisp that had survived the long 
travail. She whispered feebly: “Where’s my baby? I 
haven’t even seen it yet. Is it a boy or-” 

Patty knelt and caressed her and asked her to be brave. 
Then, in order to have done with the horror, told it to her 
in the fewest words. 

Immy gave back the ghost of a shriek in protest against 
this miserable reward of all her shame and all the rending 
of her soul and body. She wanted to hold her achievement 
in her arms. She wanted to feel its little mouth nuzzling 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


259 

her flesh, drawing away that first clotted ache. Nature de¬ 
manded that the child take up its offices in her behalf no 
less than its own. Thousands of years of habit clamored 
in her flesh. 

No one could say how much was love and how much was 
strangled instinct. But she was frantic. She whispered 
Murder! and kept maundering as she rocked her head side- 
wise, trying vainly to lift her weak hands in battle: 

“Oh, this is too much, this is just a little too much! How 
much am I supposed to endure? Will somebody please tell 
me how much I am expected to stand? That’s all I ask. 
Just tell me where my rights begin, if ever. If ever! My 
baby! My little, little baby that has never seen me and 
never can see me! Why, they won’t even let me hold my 
own baby in my arms!” 

RoBards stared at her in such pity that his heart seemed 
to beat up into his throat. Patty knelt and put out her hands 
to Immy in prayer for mercy, but Immy pushed them away, 
and threshed about like a broken jumping jack yanked by 
an invisible giant child. 

She turned her head to him and pleaded: “Papa! you 
bring me my baby. You always get me what I want, papa. 
Get me my baby!” 

Since life seemed determined to deny him his every plea, 
RoBards resolved that he at least would not deny anyone 
else anything—especially not Immy. He went to the big 
chair where the blanketed bundle was and gathering the 
child into his aching arms carried it to Immy and laid it 
in hers. 

The way her hands and her gaze and her moans and her 
tears rushed out to welcome it persuaded him that he had 
done the right thing. If ever property had been restored to 
its owner, now was the time. 

He could not bear to see the grief that bled about the 
child from Immy’s eyes. She held it close under her down- 
showering curls and her tears streamed over it like rain 
from the eaves on snow. They could not waken roses or 
violets, but they eased the sky. 


26 o 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


She wept no longer the harsh brine of hate. Her grief 
was pure regret, the meek, the baffled yearning for things 
that cannot be in this helpless world. 

This was that doll that as a little girl she had held to her 
merely hinted breasts and had rocked to sleep and made 
fairy plans for. Now and then as she wagged her head 
over it, and boasted of its beauty, she would laugh a little 
and look up with a smile all awry and tear-streaked. 

And that was what broke RoBards: to see her battling 
so bravely to find something beautiful, some pretext for 
laughter in the poor rubbish of her life. He wondered that 
it did not break God’s heart to see such a face uplifted. Per¬ 
haps he could not see so far. Perhaps he turned away and 
rushed across the stars to hide from her, as RoBards fled 
from her. 

He hobbled into his library, that wolf-den of his, and 
he glared at it with hatred of everything in it. He lighted 
the kindling laid crosswise in the fireplace, to hear flames 
crackle, and to fight the dank chill. 

There were lawbooks piled and outspread about his desk. 
He flung them off the table to the floor. Laws! Human 
laws! 

On the shelves there were philosophies, histories, a Bible, 
a Koran, Confucius, the Talmud, Voltaire, a volume of Dr. 
Chirnside’s sermons. He tore them from their places and 
tossed them into the air to sprawl and scatter their leaves like 
snowflakes—and as full of wisdom. He flung a few of them 
into the fire, but they began to smother it. And somehow 
that made him laugh. 

The abysmal vanity of his temper! He was more foolish 
and futile than the books he insulted. Poor Job, whose God 
gave him to the devil to torture on a bet, without explaining 
to his servant why. Poor Kung-fu-tse trying to be wise. 
Poor Voltaire, with a mighty cachinnation and a heart full 
of pity for the victims of persecution. Poor Dr. Chirnside, 
anxiously floundering through the bogs of terror on the 
stilts of dogma. Poor Jud Lasher, lying there in the walls! 
—or where ? 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


261 


This wrestling, Jacob-wise, with invisible angels or fiends, 
took his mind for a saving while from th^ unbearable 
spectacle of his own child’s immediate hell. 

There was silence again about the lonely house. By and 
by Patty came into the room to say: 

“She’s asleep. I gave her some drops. Too many, I’m 
afraid. And now—now what?” 

They leaned against the mantelpiece, tall shadows against 
the swirling flames. Her head and his were lost in the dark 
as if they were giants reaching to the clouds. And they were, 
indeed, in the clouds; lost there. 

They both thought of the same thing, of course: As 
usual with human kind, they were concerned about keeping 
something secret from somebody else. They wanted to make 
a decent concealment of their family shame. 

RoBards’ eyes wandered and fell upon the hearthstone at 
his feet with the firelight shuttling about it in ripples. Jud 
Lasher was under there. 

He must not hide the child in these same walls. There 
would be something burlesque about that. Strange, hideou^, 
loathsome truth that the most sorrowful things have only to 
be repeated to become comic! 

He walked away from the hearthstone. It was too much 
like a headstone. He went to the window. The night had 
not changed. The earth was stowed away under a great 
tight tarpaulin of snow. The sky was a vast steel-blue win- 
do wpane frosted with stars and the long ice-trail of the 
Milky Way. 

Through the snow a few trees stood upthrust. Among 
them the little tulip trees huddled together slim and still. 
There beneath were the bodies of his children and Patty’s. 
He had seen Patty cry over them as Immy had done, and 
sway with their still frames, according to that inveterate habit 
women have of rocking their children, awake or asleep, alive, 
or- 

Immy’s baby belonged out there with the family—with its 
tiny uncle and its tiny aunt. They would not flinch from 
it or snub it because of the absence of a marriage ceremony. 



262 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


It had not been to blame. There was nothing it could have 
done to insist upon such a provision; nothing to prevent its 
own arrival. It brought with it a certain sanctifying grace. 
It brought with it a certain penitential suffering. 

RoBards nodded to himself, went to Patty and told her 
his plan, and then hastened to find in the cellar an axe and 
a shovel, and a discarded empty box of the nearest size for 
its purpose. 

He put on his heaviest coat, his boots and his gloves, and 
a heavy scarf. In the meantime Patty had fetched the child. 
She whispered: 

“When I took it from her, her hands resisted. Her lips 
made a kissing sound and she mumbled something that 
sounded like, ‘Baby go by-by!’ ” 

Patty had wrapped the little form in a silken shawl she 
had always prized since it came out of China in one of her 
father’s ships—in the wonderful days when she had had a 
father and he had had ships. A girlish jealousy had per¬ 
sisted in her heart and she would never let Immy wear that 
shawl. Now she gave it up because it was the only thing 
she could find in the house precious enough to honor the 
going guest and be a sacrifice. 

RoBards pushed out into the snow with his weapons and 
his casket, and made his way to the young tulip trees, which 
were no longer so young as he imagined them. 

The snow was ice and turned the shovel aside. He must 
crack its surface with the ax, and it was hard for his frozen 
fingers to grip the handle. Only the sheer necessity of 
finishing the work made it possible for him to stand the 
pain. By the time he reached the soil deep below, he was so 
tired and so hot that he flung off his overcoat and his muffler 
and gloves. 

The ground was like a boulder and the ax rang and 
glanced and sprinkled sparks of fire. Before he had made 
the trench deep enough, he had thrown aside his fur cap 
and his coat, and yet he glowed. 

At last he achieved the petty grave, and set the box in it, 
and heard the clods clatter on it; filled in and trampled down 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 263 

the shards of soil, and shoveled the snow upon that and 
made all as seemly as he could. 

It was not a job that a gravedigger would boast of, but 
it was his best. He gazed at the unmarked tomb of the 
anonymous wayfarer. There should have been some rite, 
but he could not find a prayer to fit the occasion or his own 
rebellious mood. 

He was so tired, so dog-tired in body and soul that he 
would have been glad to lie down in his own grave if some¬ 
body would have dug him one. 

He hobbled and slid back to the house, flung the ax and 
the shovel into the cellar from the top of the stairs, and went 
to bed. 

The next morning he would have sworn that the whole 
thing was delirium. At any rate, it was finished. 

But it was not finished. Immy woke at last and before her 
mind was out of the spell of the drug, her arms were groping 
for her baby, her breast was aching; and when she under¬ 
stood, her scream was like a lightning stroke in a snowstorm. 

RoBards could stand no more. He told Patty that she 
would have to face the ordeal. It was cowardly to leave 
her, but he must save his sanity or the whole family was 
ruined. 

As he left the house for the barn and the horse he kept 
there, he was glad to see that snow was fluttering again. That 
little mound needed more snow for its concealment. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


When he reached New York, RoBards had to take his 
frozen hands to a physician, who managed to save them for 
him, though there were times when the anguishes that clawed 
them made him almost regret their possession. 

He was tempted to resign his judgeship, feeling that he 
was unworthy of the high bench, since he had committed 
crimes, and had been ready to commit others, and had on 
his soul crimes that he regretted not committing. 

But he lacked the courage or the folly to publish his true 
reasons for resigning and he could think of no pretexts. 
He solaced himself with the partially submerged scandals of 
other jurists, and wondered where a perfect soul could be 
found to act as judge if perfection were to be demanded. 
Even Christ had put to flight all of the accusers of the taken 
woman and had let her go free with a word of good advice. 

At times the memory of his own black revolt against the 
laws softened RoBards 5 heart when he had before him men 
or women accused of sins, and he punished them with noth¬ 
ing more than a warning. At other times his own guilt made 
him merciless to the prisoners of discovery, and he struck 
out with the frenzy of a man in torment, or with the spirit 
of the college boys who hazed their juniors cruelly because 
they had themselves been hazed by their seniors. 

Deep perplexities wrung his heart when poor souls stood 
beneath his eyes charged with the smuggling of unlicensed 
children into the world, children without a passport, outlaw 
children stamped with the strange label “illegitimate.” 

They and their importers wore a new cloak in RoBards’ 
eyes. They had been hitherto ridiculous, or contemptible, or 
odious. Now he understood what malice there was in the 
joke that passion had played on them. They were the 

264 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


265 

scorched victims of a fire against which they had taken 
out no insurance. Like Immy they must have suffered bitter 
ecstasies of terrified rapture, long vigils of bewilderment, 
heartbreaks of racking pain, with ludicrous disgrace for their 
recompense. 

The Albesons returned from Georgia with such a report as 
a Northern farmer might have made on Southern soil with¬ 
out the trouble of the journey. RoBards pretended to be 
satisfied. They found that Immy was not so much improved 
as they expected—“Kind of peaked and poorly,” Abby 
complained. 

Immy came back to town and though she never quite lost 
that prayer in the eyes known as the “hunted look,” she be¬ 
gan to find escape and finally delight in her old gayeties. 

Then Captain Harry Chalender returned from California 
on one of the Yankee clippers that were astounding the 
world by their greyhound speed. It took him barely seventy- 
six days to sail from San Francisco around the Horn to 
Sandy Hook, the whole trip needing only seven months. It 
was indeed the age of restless velocity. Chalender came in as 
usual with the prestige of broken records. 

He was rich and full of traveler’s tales of wild justice, 
Vigilante executions, deluges of gold, fantastic splendors 
amid grueling hardships. 

His anecdotes bored RoBards, who listened to them with 
the poor appetite of a stay-at-home for a wanderer’s brag. 
But Patty listened hungrily, and Immy was as entranced as 
Desdemona hearkening to the Moor. Chalender brought 
Patty a handsome gift and dared to bring a handsomer to 
Immy. 

Even his cynical intuitions failed to suspect the education 
she had undergone, but he noted how much older she was, 
how wise yet reckless. And she found him perilously in¬ 
teresting beyond any of the young bucks whose farthest 
voyages were bus rides down Broadway from their board¬ 
ing houses to their high desks in the counting houses. 

There was nothing in Chalender’s manner toward Immy 
that Patty or David could resent when they had their eyes 


266 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


upon him, but he took Immy far from their eyes often. 
And RoBards was sure that Patty was harrowed not only 
with a mother’s anxiety for a daughter, but with an elder 
beauty’s resentment at a younger’s triumph. 

On the next New Year’s Day Chalender came to the Ro¬ 
Bards home late of a snow-clouded afternoon. He ex¬ 
plained that he had begun up north and worked his way 
downtown; and St. John’s Park was the last word to the 
south. This led Patty to remind RoBards with a sharp look 
that she had been begging him to move up where the people 
were. 

The year had begun with an exhausting day. The first 
guest had come before nine and it was getting toward six 
when Chalender rang at the closed door. The RoBards fam¬ 
ily was jaded with the procession of more or less befuddled 
visitors, for everybody still called on everybody and drank 
too much too often. 

Harry Chalender had tried to see if he could not establish 
a record in calls. He reached the RoBards house in a pitiable 
condition. He was dressed like the fop he always was, his 
hair curled, oiled, and perfumed; his handkerchief scented; 
his waistcoat of a flowery pattern, his feet in patent leathers 
glossy as of yore. His breath was even more confusedly 
aromatic with cloves than usual. He apologized thickly: 

“Patty, I think I’ve done something to give me immor- 
talily at lash. I’ve called at shixy-sheven house between 
nine ’s morn’ and five ’s even’n. And I’ve had ’s much 
cherry bounce I’m full of elasticicy. I har’ly touch ground. 
And wines—oh, Patty! I’m a human cellar. And food— 
stewed oyssers, turkey, min’ spies! But I always come back 
to you, Patty, and to Immy. Seem’ you and your livin’ 
image, Immy, I can’t tell whish is whish; I half suspect I’m 
seein’ double. Am I or—am I?” 

Giggling fatuously over his wit, he fell asleep. Patty 
regarded him with anger, and RoBards with disgust; but 
both were dazed to see that Immy smiled and placed a 
cushion under his rolling head. 

Drunkenness was beginning to lose its charm. In 1846 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


267 

New York had voted against the licensing of liquor dealers 
by a large majority. Maine had followed with a law pro¬ 
hibiting the sale or manufacture of all strong drinks under 
penalty of fine or imprisonment. 

Three years later New York passed a copy of the Maine 
law and the Temperance party’s candidate won the gover¬ 
norship. But nobody was punished; clubs were formed with 
no otlier*bond than thirst. The edict was found to be a source 
of infinite political corruption, general contempt for law, and 
tolerance for lawbreakers. It collapsed at last and was re¬ 
pealed as a failure. All the old people agreed that the good 
old times were gone. 

Much as RoBards had despised the immemorial tendency 
of old people to forget the truth of their own youth and 
prate of it as a time of romantic beauty, he found himself 
despairing of these new times. The new dances were ap¬ 
palling. The new drinks were poison. The new modes in 
love were unheard of. 

Once more he was wondering if it were not his duty to 
horsewhip Chalender or to kill him. The horror of involving 
his wife in scandal restrained him before; now his daughter 
was concerned. 

He pleaded with Immy, wasted commands upon her, and 
was frozen by her cynical smile. She laughed most at his 
solemnest moods just as her mother had done. She would 
mock him, hug and kiss him, and make him hold her cloak 
for her glistening bare shoulders, then skip downstairs to 
take Harry Chalender’s arm and go with him in his carriage 
to wherever he cared to go. One night it was to see the 
new play Uncle Tom’s Cabin, based on a novel written by a 
clergyman’s wife, with pirated editions selling about the 
world by the hundred thousand—six different theatres were 
playing the play at the same time in London. Another night 
Chalender set Immy forth in a box at the Castle Garden 
where Mario and Grisi were singing against the gossip of the 
whisperers and starers at Chalender’s new beauty. On other 
nights Chalender danced with Immy at fashionable homes 
where she could not have gone without him. On other 


268 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


nights they did not explain where they went, and RoBards 
was held at bay by Immy’s derisive, “Don’t you wish you 
knew?” or worse yet her riant insolence, “You’re too young 
to know.” 

Patty was frantic with defeat. She and Immy wrangled 
more like sisters or uncongenial neighbors than like mother 
and daughter. RoBards was constantly forced to intervene 
to keep the peace. By paternal instinct he defended Immy 
against her mother and expressed amazement at Patty’s 
suspicions, though they were swarming in his own heart. He 
tried to win Immy by his own trust in her: 

“My darling,” he said once, “you are too young to realize 
how it looks to go about with a man of an earlier generation. 
Chalender is old enough to be your father. And think of 
his past!” 

“Think of mine!” she said with a tone less of bravado than 
of abjection. 

This stabbed RoBards deep. But he went on as if to a 
stubborn jury: , 

“If Chalender were honest, he would want to marry you.” 

“He does!” 

“Oh, God help us all!” Patty whispered with a look as 
if ashes had been flung into her face and as if she tasted 
them. 

RoBards snarled: 

“I’ll kill him if he ever crosses my doorstep again!” 

To which Immy responded demurely: 

“Then I’ll have to meet him outside.” 

This defiance was smothering. She went on: 

“Why shouldn’t I marry him? I don’t have to tell him 
anything. He doesn’t ask me any questions. Doesn’t dare 
start the question game, perhaps. He’s lots of fun. He 
keeps me laughing and interested, and—guessing.” 

This was such a pasquinade on the usual romantic reasons, 
that her father could contrive no better rejoinder than: 

“But my little sweetheart, such a marriage would be bound 
to fail.” 

This soft answer drove Immy to a grosser procacity: 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


269 

“Then I can divorce him easily enough. I can join the 
crowd and go to Michigan. After two years of residence, 
I could get a divorce on any one of seven grounds!” 

“Immy!” 

“Or Indiana is still better. I was reading that you can 
establish a residence there after a night’s lodging. Men and 
women leave home saying they’re going away for a little 
visit or on business and they never come back, or come back 
single. If Harry Chalender didn’t behave, I could surprise 
him. Besides, Harry would give me anything I want, even 
a divorce, if I asked him. But don’t you worry, I’ll get 
along somehow.” 

And she was gone, leaving her parents marooned on a 
barren arctic island. 


CHAPTER XL 


WHEN his term as judge ended, RoBards declined to try 
for re-election, and returned to the practice of law. 

Once more the Croton River brought him clients—but also 
a civil war with his son Keith. This was a sore hurt to Ro¬ 
Bards’ heart, for he and the boy had been mysteriously 
drawn together years before, and he had found such sym¬ 
pathy and such loyalty in Keith’s devotion, that he had 
counted upon him as a future partner in his legal career. 

The water lust of New York was insatiable. As fast as 
new supplies were found they were outgrown. And the 
more or less anonymous and gloryless lovers of the city had 
always to keep a generation ahead of its growth. 

The vice of water had led to the use of an average of. 
seventy-eight gallons a day by each inhabitant. Every Sat¬ 
urday the reservoir at Forty-second Street was half drained. 
A new invention called the bathtub was coming into such 
favor especially of Saturdays that some legislatures made 
bathing without a doctor’s advice as illegal as drinking 
alcohol. The ever-reliable pulpit denounced such cleanliness 
as next to ungodliness: attention to the wicked body was 
indecent. 

But already the need was urgent for a new reservoir. 
Another lake must be established within the city. The Cro¬ 
ton Department had been authorized to acquire land. After 
much debate a thousand lots held by a hundred owners were 
doomed to be submerged. They lay in a sunken tract in the 
heart of a region set apart for the new park—to be called 
Central because it was miles to the north of all access. 
Nearly eight million dollars were voted for the purchase 
and improvement of this wilderness. The project came in 
handy during the panic of 1857, when the poor grew so 

270 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


271 

peevish and riotous that the city was forced to distribute 
bread and provide jobs. Twelve hundred hungry citizens 
and a hundred horses were set to work leveling the Park. 

But first the city had to battle with the landholders and 
many of them engaged RoBards as their counsel. There 
were many houses on the bed of the new lake, gardens and 
squatters’ cabins. 

Keith protested against his father’s activity, and tried 
to convert him to the great principles of the city’s higher 
rights. 

The young man was frankly ashamed of his parent. It 
was like having a grandfather who had been a Tory in the 
Revolution, or a Hartford secessionist in 1812. 

Keith had graduated from Columbia well toward the bot¬ 
tom of his dass; but he had a gift for leadership among the 
least studious students. He preferred hydraulics to classics, 
and sneered at the law. 

He was aided and abetted in his ambitions by Harry 
Chalender, who continued to exert a malign influence over 
the home, though he never came near it any more, and Immy 
never mentioned his name. If she saw him she met him out¬ 
side, under the cover of other engagements. Then one day 
Keith came home swaggering: 

‘‘I’ve got a position as an engineer with the Croton De¬ 
partment. Uncle Harry got it for me; took me to a firm 
of engineers and made them take me in.” 

That pet name “uncle” angered RoBards almost as much 
as the deed. But he could not expose such feelings to his 
son, or thwart the boy’s future. 

The theatre of Keith’s labors was the long channel of the 
Croton River. At first he had to tote surveying instruments 
and scramble over rough ground. But the aqueduct was to 
him one of the majestic wonders of the world. Patty was 
glad to move out early to Tuliptree Farm to be near him, 
though Immy hated the place, and not without reason. 

Repairs were incessantly required in the masonry im¬ 
prisoning the Croton, and one afternoon Keith came home 
to Tuliptree Farm worn out, to tell of a strange breach: 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


272 

“Near Sing Sing—in the section of the aqueduct that 
Uncle Harry built—we found that a willow tree had sent 
one of its roots into the crown of the arch. In six months 
it had bored a hole twenty feet right through the solid stone.” 

RoBards started up in his chair at this. The thought had 
thrust into his mind: What if the great tulip tree growing 
out there had done the like to the foundations of the house? 

He could imagine the numberless invisible roots groping 
in the dark, deep soil and fumbling along the foundation 
stone, pushing an inquisitive finger into every cranny and 
burrowing with the persistent curiosity of that tree which 
made a net of roots about the skull of Major John Andre. 

The high Tulip lost at once its dignity of guarcjianship. 
It became a vast devil fish, a myriapod slimily prying and 
squirming, with the house in its clutches. 

It might even now be ready to swell and heave and over¬ 
turn the house. The scavenger might be even now wrapping 
its arms about Jud Lasher’s corpse—slowly, patiently haling 
it forth to the light of day and the eyes of men. 

There seemed to be an unrelenting conspiracy in the world 
to bury everything that man would preserve and expose 
everything that man would conceal. In RoBard’s own con¬ 
science there was a something burrowing and squirming, as 
if commanding him to disgorge the secret interred in his 
brain. 

The secret was like a growth creeping, growing and bulg¬ 
ing toward the surface and multiplying its pain with every 
hour of concealment. He wondered how long he could with¬ 
hold the proclamation of his crime. He caught himself at 
long intervals just about to announce to any bystander: 

“I have committed my own little murder in my day. I 
am human, too. I am not innocent because of any incapacity 
for crime. My respectable reputation is due to my discre¬ 
tion, not to any flaccidity of character.” 

Months would go by with no onset of this publishing in¬ 
stinct. Then it would sweep over him like a vertigo. 

Hearing Keith tell of the tender root that broke through 
the aqueduct, he understood how even stone and mortar 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 273 

must eventually yield to the intolerable nagging of a weak 
thing that never rested. 

He rose and with a laborious pretense of dawdling 
sauntered to the door, out and around the house to where 
the tulip tree stood. As if idly, he leaned against the trunk 
and studied the sprawl of the roots. Some of them were 
thicker than a young tree. They writhed and contorted the 
ground. Standing still like pythons petrified, they yet 
seemed to move with a speed the more dreadful for its per¬ 
sistence. Glaciers were not more leisurely, nor more 
resistless. 

The roots dived into the earth, some of them bent upon 
reaching the foundation walls. They had but one instinct, 
the hunt for water, and nothing could check them but death. 

Down the outside stairway of the cellar went RoBards 
and stumbling in the dark found the wall nearest the tree and 
passed his hands along it like a blind man. 

His anxious fingers encountered tendrils pleached against 
the rough masonry. He made a light and found that the 
tulip tree was already within the walls. The roots were like 
worms covered with mould. On the cellar floor was a dust 
of old mortar, and bits of it slowly shoved out from between 
the chinks. Some of the dislodged mortar was no older than 
the night when he had lifted out stones and buried Jud 
Lasher somewhere inside there and smeared fresh mortar in 
the crevices. 

Terrified by the peril of this secret inquiry of the far- 
delving roots, he went back to the outer air. 

Either he must be surrendered to exposure or the tree 
must be executed. The life of such a tree if let alone was 
far beyond the human span. The strength of it was uncanny. 

He stood a while, as motionless as the roots, charmed by 
their snaky spell. Then an idea came to his rescue. He 
called to Albeson, who was puttering about the yard in his 
Sunday-go-to-meetin’s with his collar off for comfort. 

“See those roots,” said RoBards. “They’re going to tip 
the house over if we don’t kill them. Get your saw and ax 
and we’ll cut them off now.” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


274 

“No special hurry as I can see,” said Albeson. 

“We’ll get it over with to-day.” 

“In spite of its bein’ the Sabbath?” Albeson protested, 
making religion an excuse for laziness. 

“The better the day the better the deed.” 

Albeson condensed the Declaration of Independence into 
a grumbling dissent, then fetched the tools. All afternoon 
they worked, chopping, digging, sawing, until they had sev¬ 
ered all the Briarean arms on the side next the house. 

“Looks like we’ve killed the old tree,” Albeson groaned. 
“It’ll naturally bleed to death.” 

“Better lose the tree than the house,” RoBards retorted. 

“Wall, they’re both your’n to do with as you’re a mind 
to,” said Albeson, absolving himself of guilt and folly, as 
he went his way. RoBards paused at the front steps to look 
back at his gigantic quondam friend. It had been treasonably 
making ready to betray him. He did not love it any more. 
The house itself was changing from a sanctuary to a peni¬ 
tentiary. He could set it on fire easily, but the heat would 
only crack the foundation walls apart. He could not burn 
those stones. 

He had justly sentenced the tree to a partial execution. 
If it perished, it had earned its fate. 

It was beautiful, though. It stood lofty and shapely, 
the broad leaves shimmering in an afternoon zephyr. It had 
a frank and joyous life and he wondered if it would suffer 
much pain from the mayhem he had committed on it. 

He had visited a slow death of torture upon the patriarch. 
Would it know that it was dying? Would it ache and 
struggle against its fate? He was as sorry for it now as a 
man is for an overpowered enemy; he was sorry he had been 
so harsh with it. 

He thought of Immy as she had been when he revenged 
her upon Jud Lasher. What, after all, had been the profit 
of that murder? He had tried to shelter Immy from harm 
as if she were a sacred ark, death to touch. And now she 
was the reckless companion of Harry Chalender in his 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


275 

revels. He had guarded her ignorance as a kind of vir¬ 
ginity, and now there was nothing that she did not know. 

He had taken a life with his own hands, to spare her so 
much as one chance meeting with someone who might re¬ 
mind her of her lucklessness. And now she flouted him to 
his face and was so bored with his society that she devoted 
herself to a man whose name he could not hear without 
rancor. 

Well, if she would only be patient a while longer, her 
father would find the means and the time to give her more 
attention. He would travel with her to far-off lands, where 
she would be so fascinated with new sights and new suitors 
that she would forget Chalender and find some young and 
noble lover worthy of the Immy that she should have been. 

The next day as he stood on the porch, he was startled to 
hear her voice crying his name: 

■“Papa, papa!” 

He paused, thinking it imagination, but he saw her coming 
to him in a swift-rolling carriage. At her side was Chalender 
with exultance in his smile. 

The carriage whirled in at the open gate, and the moment 
the driver stopped it short, Chalender leaped out, helped 
Immy to alight, and ran with her to the steps. 

And there the twain knelt in a laughing parody of hom¬ 
age, and Chalender—Chalender his arch enemy, his chief an¬ 
noyance upon the earth—dared to mimic Immy’s word and 
exclaim: 

“Papa!” 

As RoBards’ eyes rolled in wonder, he caught sight of 
Patty at a window staring unseen. She vanished almost 
at once, as if she had fallen. 

Before RoBards could frame a question, Immy was up 
and at him in a whirlwind. She had her arms about his 
neck and was crying: 

“Papa dearest, Harry and I have just come across the 
border from Connecticut. We went over there and the 
funniest old justice of the peace you ever saw married us. 


276 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

And we’ve come home galloping to ask your blessing. And 
I’ve come to pack some of my things.” 

The habit of indulgence answered for RoBards before his 
slow wrath could muster its forces. He stammered 
idiotically: 

“Married! Well, what do you think of that? Well, well! 
This is a surprise but—well—bless you, anyway.” 

And his hands went up over them priestly. 


CHAPTER XLI 


He stumbled into the house in sudden need of Patty and 
her support in his panic. 

He found her lying on the floor of the parlor, where she 
had fainted. Her big crinoline skirts belled out and she 
looked like a huge tulip fallen on its side. Her feet sat 
up awkwardly on their heels; her limbs were visible to the 
knees. It was the only ungraceful posture he had ever 
known her to assume. 

As he gathered her into his arms, Patty returned from 
her coma into a kind of mania. She talked to herself or to 
some invisible listener. Mostly she muttered unintelligibly 
some gibberish that made her beautiful mouth ugly and 
unhuman. 

She clung to her husband’s hands and arms, clutching at 
them when he moved them to lift her to a chair and bent 
above her, pleading with her to talk to him. She called him 
by his first name, babbling: 

“David, David, oh, David! David, David!” 

It was a long while before he could make out any other 
word and then he caught faintly: 

“They shan’t stay here! They can go to Europe or Cali¬ 
fornia or hell. But they shan’t stay here! they shan’t, they 
shan’t!” 

He could not persuade her to speak to them. When Immy 
came in radiant and shaken with laughter, Patty laughed 
like a woman long insane, worn down with some old ribald 
mania; but she would not speak, though Immy wept and 
begged: 

“Mamma, kiss me. Please, Mamma! If I did wrong, 
it’s too late to make a fuss. Don’t spoil my first little chance 
of happiness, Mamma! Oh, come on and kiss me and say 
you forgive me!” 


277 


278 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

At last Patty whispered, and patted Immy’s quivering 
hands, but as if to be rid of her: 

“I’ve nothing to forgive you, you poor baby, you poor 
little ignorant baby. But—but-” 

That was all, and she put out her cheek to Immy’s lips 
in dismissal, but did not kiss her. Immy stole away baffled, 
disheartened. 

The wise Chalender dared not approach Patty. His in¬ 
tuition of woman warned him to stay out on the porch or 
wait by the carriage till Immy’s trunk was brought down. 
Then he drove away with her and RoBards dared not wave 
them good-by. 

At last when there was silence and the hush of night, 
Robards fell asleep. He was wakened by a squeaking sound. 
He thought he saw a ghost by the bureau. He rose slowly 
and went towards the wraith cautiously. It was Patty in 
her nightgown. She was struggling to open the drawer 
where he had kept an ancient dueling pistol for years against 
the burglars that never came. 

As he stood stock still, she got the drawer open and took 
out the weapon. She caressed it, and nodded her head, 
mumbling drowsily, “Yes, yes, I must, I must save her 
from him!” Her lips moved, but her eyes were not open. 

With all gentleness, he took her hand and lifted from her 
unresisting fingers the pistol. Then he set his arms about 
Patty and guided her back to bed. He lifted her feet be¬ 
tween the sheets and drew the covers over her. 

She breathed the placid, shallow breath of one who sleeps, 
but she clung to his hands so that he could hardly free them. 
Then he hid the pistol under the mattress beneath his head 
and thanked heaven for one horror at least that had been 
forestalled. 

By and by Patty, still aslumber, turned into his bosom 
and laid her little hands beneath his chin. He sighed, “Thank 
God for sleep!” But even in her sleep there was purgatory, 
for she twitched and clutched him in incessant nightmares. 

The next morning she said nothing of her dream or her 
somnambulism. And he felt no need of questioning her. 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


279 

The soul has its own torture chambers, where even love has 
no right of entry, especially when it knows too well what is 
within. 

All that Patty said was: “I don’t feel well enough to 
get up to-day. I’ll just rest here.” 

Late that forenoon Immy drove up alone from White 
Plains, where she and her husband had found lodging at a 
tavern. She led her father into his library and said to 
him: 

“Harry—my husband—and I have talked things over and 
he’s—we’ve decided to go back to California. I think I’d 
be happier out there—away from everything. I think 
Mamma would be happier. You haven’t congratulated me 
yet, so I congratulate you on getting me honestly married 
off. That’s something in these days. Besides, nobody will 
miss me much.” 

As RoBards looked at her now, she was not the wife of 
Chalender or anybody: she was the little, ill-fated girl he 
had defended in vain against life. She had secured herself 
a new defender—against too much sober thought about 
things. He realized how canny she had been, how lonely and 
how afraid. 

His arms went leaping out to her. She flung herself into 
his lap and he clenched her fiercely, kissing the rippling curls 
along the top of her bent head, and moaning: 

“Oh, my baby, my baby!”* 

Then she broke into sobs: 

“Don’t say that word, Papa! That’s the word I said 
when I lost my baby—as you’ve lost yours. Where have 
they gone, Papa, your baby and mine? Where have they 
both gone? Where does everything go that we love and 
lose ?” 


CHAPTER XLII 


THE newspapers made a pretty story of the Chalender- 
RoBards marital alliance. For once, they overlooked a hor¬ 
ror and gave space to romance. The retreat in Westchester 
had saved the family once more. 

The editors praised Captain Chalender as “our popular 
and public-spirited citizen, a soldier and a leader in civic 
affairs, whose large interests compel his immediate return 
to the Golden Gate, whither he takes as his bride, Miss 
Imogene RoBards, one of the belles of the season.” They 
even had a word for ex-Judge David RoBards, “the well- 
known jurist,” and continued, “The bride’s mother in her 
day was one of the beauties of her generation and a toast of 
the town in the gallant old times that are now no more.” 

RoBards brought the paper home to the farm from town 
to show Patty. He thought only of the comfort she should 
take from the glossing over of the wretched misalliance. But 
Patty was numb to the fear of publication. 

As soon as she spoke he wondered that he had lacked the 
common intelligence to spare her the crudest of wounds. 
She read the brief notice and sighed: 

“ ‘The bride’s mother—in her day—was!’ ” 

She dropped the paper and smiled miserably: “They’ve 
got me in the obituary column already.” 

She seemed to die then. 

He understood, and falling on his knees by the rocking 
chair, caught her as she drooped forward across his shoulder. 
She had read her death-warrant. Her head rolled as heavily 
as if the ax had already fallen on the so kissable nape of 
her gracile neck. 

What could RoBards say ? He could and did protest that 
she was more beautiful than ever, that eternal youth was 

280 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 281 

hers, that she was his greatest pride, that she had all his 
love, all his love. 

But he protested too much. He could not stay the scythe 
of Time. He thought of old, old phrases, ancient confessions 
of the dread meekness of humanity before the ineluctable 
dragon, the glutton of charm and fleetness and vivacity— 
Tempus edax rerum—tarda vetustas —the swift fugacity 
of everything, youth that flows out of the veins as sand from 
a shattered hourglass. 

He clung to Patty, but less and less as one who might 
rescue her from drowning, more as one who would prove his 
love by drowning with her. 

He could give her no courage in a battle already irretriev¬ 
ably lost. Rather, he took panic from her and began to 
understand that, while he had no beauty to lose, he had 
already caught up with his future, and was beginning to 
leave it behind, as a man who walks toward the west all 
day overtakes his diminishing shadow and then leaves it 
lengthening aft. 

Youth had gone out of the house, too, now that Immy had 
taken with her not only her trunks and her bright gowns and 
her jingling trinkets, but her laughter, as well, her mischief, 
her audacities, her headlong genius for peril. 

But they rarely spoke of her, for her name meant not 
only Chalender, but all the dangers of the sea, the infamous 
storms of the antarctic waters, the long climb up the infinitely 
distant Pacific Ocean to the equator and far, far beyond; 
and then all the fabulous hazards of the San Francisco 
frontier. Between that new city and New York lay the 
oceanic continent. Railroads and wagon-trains were push¬ 
ing through the vast wastes where the buffaloes swept in 
tides and the Indians lurked, but letters were forever in 
coming, and Immy’s parents could know nothing of her fate 
for half a year; if, indeed, they ever heard of her again. 

There were the other children. Keith had turned twenty, 
a young Viking indifferent to girls except as clowns to amuse 
him—which gave Patty almost her only comfort in the world. 

But David the younger, whom they called Junior, was 


282 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


coming along to the last of his teens, and he was as full of 
romance as an Orlando. He did not stick poems on trees, 
but he carved linked initials in the bark of the tulip trees 
and quickly gouged them out before his father could dis¬ 
cover what they were. 

When RoBards reminded him that he was endangering 
the life of some of the slenderer trees, he groaned, “All right, 
Dad; I’ll quit,” and walked away as cheerful as Job. 

His father and mother eyed him from a distance anxiously, 
and exchanged glances of alarm over his sagging head at 
table, but they could not imagine what siren had bewitched 
him; and he would not answer their questions. They made 
light remarks about love, forgetting how important it had 
been to them in their equal age, and how important it was 
to them now. 

But Junior rebuked them with eyes as old as those of 
Prometheus chained to a cliff and torn by a vulture’s hooked 
beak. 

The unsolved puzzle of David’s infatuation began to 
harass his parents and frighten them, for he was wasting 
away to a melancholia. 

They tried to keep track of him, to see which one of 
which neighbor’s daughters he was frequenting. But he 
always managed to elude them. He would lie coiled in a 
chair somewhere reading Walter Scott or Dickens or Byron, 
or the morbid Poe, until they gave over watching him. 
When they looked for him he had vanished. 

They decided to take him back to the city, in spite of the 
heat of the late September and the charm of the golden 
countryside. The announcement staggered the boy. It 
dazed them to see one so young so capable of despair—as 
if any age were immune to anguish; as if a little pitcher 
could not overflow as well as a large. 

One afternoon he got away from the house with a fox’s 
craftiness. RoBards missed him immediately and, seizing 
his hat, set out in pursuit, knowing that Junior had but little 
start of him. 

He hurried to the gate and looked up and down the road. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


283 

In neither direction was anyone visible. What other way 
could the boy have gone? The view before him was wide 
and clear; the hill fell away in such broad billows that the 
eye commanded more of the scene than a man could have 
covered, running. 

The only region left to explore was above and back of 
the house. RoBards had avoided that realm for years. Up 
there was the Tarn of Mystery, where he had almost killed 
Jud Lasher; up there were the thickets where he had hunted 
him down and ended him, 

There was no pleasure in invading that accursed demesne 
of black memories, but his frenzy for an answer to the riddle 
of his son outweighed his reluctance. 

He turned and marched grimly up the slope. It seemed 
to have steepened since he ran up it so fleetly years ago. 
His breath was shorter—excitement it was, no doubt, that 
made his heart beat faster and more heavily. 

Time had wrought upon everything up here. Bushes were 
clumps of shrubbery; saplings were trees; trees were columns 
upholding the sky. The very boulders seemed to have en¬ 
larged with age. The dead logs must have grown higher and 
fatter. At the top he had to pause and sink to the ground 
till his heart slowed up. Sitting here he could see afar. 
The autumnal winds had torn away foliage like curtains 
pulled down, discovering a wide expanse of the surging 1 
Westchester scene. 

The last time he was up here there was hardly another 
home to be descried except his own roof and the distant 
hut of the Lashers. Now there were gables and chimneys 
and gateways everywhere. A few of the houses were man¬ 
sions, snowy colonial residences with high white pillars 
reminiscent of Greek temples. 

The Lasher rookery alone was not new. It was older, 
more ramshackle than ever, though he had noted as he passed 
the growth of the little brats to big brats. 

The girl Molly who had run off to the city and gone to 
the bad, had faded into oblivion after a few noisy struggles, 
like one drowning in the sea. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


284 

RoBards had visited the Five Points occasionally, but he 
had seen nothing of Molly. Perhaps it had grown too re¬ 
spectable for her, since the Ladies’ Home Missionary So¬ 
ciety of the Methodist Church had ventured into the human 
sewer and reformed the first few sots, then called in Rev¬ 
erend Mr. Luckey, the former chaplain of Sing Sing. Under 
this explorer of the underworld they had established them¬ 
selves in a room in the Old Brewery itself. Then they 
had bought the foul den, cleared out its three hundred hu¬ 
man maggots, and torn the whole thing down, erecting in 
its place a clean new building devoted to reformation of the 
prematurely damned. 

And now a Children’s Aid Society was established there, 
teaching honest industry and proffering opportunity for 
decency to the thousands of boys and girls who had hitherto 
slept on cellar steps, or in barrels or in dens of vice and 
earned what little food they got by picking pockets, garrot- 
ing drunkards, burglary, beggary, rag and bone hunting, 
peddling matches, apples, flowers, newspapers, or their own 
dirty bodies. 

Girls could now be something better than crossing-sweepers 
or twelve-year-old harlots and dance-hall lice. 

RoBards had often been called to the Five Points to 
meetings of this and other societies. There was horror 
enough there yet, but it was not unmitigated. There was a 
manhole open above the sewer and those who wanted to 
were aided to climb out into the air. 

He had often looked for Molly Lasher among the girls 
going out to decent tasks or returning from them. He had 
watched for her among the throngs still plying the most 
venerable of trades. But her pretty, vicious smile was no 
longer to be seen. Perhaps she had been murdered, or sent 
to a prison; perhaps she had gone round the Horn to Cali¬ 
fornia, perhaps she had gone West overland. She might be 
running a saloon somewhere west, or conducting a salon 
as the pretentious wife of a bonanza king. 

Another Lasher girl had grown up to replace her in the 
hut, and perhaps later to trace her footsteps on the streets of 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 285 

New York. RoBards had seen her now and then as he 
drove past to the station. 

Usually she leaned across the gate and dreamed wide- 
eyed of something that made her wistful. Either she was 
paler than the other Lasher young, or washed oftener, for 
there was a cleanliness about her skin and in the clothes 
she was pushing through. 

Thinking of her now, he was surprised to find that he 
remembered a gradual change in her as she lolled across the 
gate. She had grown higher, the arms that fell listlessly had 
lengthened and rounded; and so had her once hollow chest, 
and her eyes and her mouth. 

The last time he saw her her hair was combed. There 
might have been a ribbon around it somewhere. He had 
an idea that her name was Aletta. 

Her mother had mentioned some such name to him once 
when she had checked him to whine: 

“No word of my boy Jud yet. After all these years 
wouldn’t he ’a’ wrote me a line, wouldn’t he ’a’ got home 
somewhow in all these years, don’t you think—if he was still 
alive ?” 

He did not like to consider old Mrs. Lasher and he rose 
to continue his search for his own son, also lost in a sea of 
mystery, gone a-whaling after some strange love. 

RoBards avoided the Tarn of Mystery, so gayly named 
and so justified in the event. But he saw no sign of Junior 
elsewhere, so he drew near the loathsome spot, circling about 
it and coming closer reluctantly. 

The old rail fence was almost rotted away, but he did not 
need to climb across it, for there was a path that led to an 
opening where two of the upper rails had been laid on the 
ground. 

The great boulders were as before but less mysterious, 
if one could believe a recent theory that they had been 
dropped there by a universal glacier that had once covered all 
this part of the world with an ocean of ice, whose slowly 
ebbing tide would flow back again perhaps and cover all of 
man’s ambitious monuments. 


286 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


He squeezed through a strait Cyclopean gateway of rock, 
and the little green pond lay before him, still thick with sub¬ 
merged grasses, still oversprinkled with curled autumn 
leaves. 

He gazed at the spot where he had beaten Jud Lasher and 
used him as a flail. He quivered with a nausea for that 
whole chapter in his life, and was glad that his swinging 
glance discovered no other human presence. 

But as he was about to back through the narrow crevice 
between the stones, he heard a voice floating above his head 
in the air, a girl’s voice, as liquid and as sweetly murmurous 
as the voice should have been of the nymph that should have 
haunted this viridescent pool. 

It was very mournful and it said: 

“All night I was reading the book you lent me. The 
Lady of the Lake! Such a long beautiful story, and so sad! 
What a sad thing love is, and how old! So many of us poor 
lovers have loved in vain—haven’t we, honey? They’ll tell 
us that we’re too young to love, but oh, darling, darling, I 
feel so old, so old! And how can I ever stand the years 
that must go by before we can be together? You’ve got 
to finish your college and make your way. I’d rather die 
than hinder you from being the great man you’re going 
to be. And I can’t help you. I’m so poor and friendless 
and ignorant. 

“But when I think, when I think of the years, the years, 
the years, I want to lie down in that water there and fold 
my hands and drown. For even when you are rich and 
famous—what would your father and mother say if you told 
them that you wanted to marry me ? Your father is rich and 
famous and everybody respects him. I’m just one of the 
Lashers.’’ 

The boy had the RoBards talent for silence and he had 
listened as quietly as his hidden father. Even now he only 
mumbled: 

“I’ll marry you or nobody, Aletta. This is a free 
country!” 

An eerie laugh broke from the girl’s throat as she cried: 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 287 

“A free country! How could there be a free country 
anywhere ? Least of all here ?” 

RoBards was grimly glad that she had sanity enough to 
understand this truth at least and the wildness of his boy's 
infatuation. To marry the impossible sister of the unspeak¬ 
able wretch that his own father had put to death—that would 
be impossible; if anything were. 

He risked discovery and leaned out to have a look at this 
weird creature whose voice had woven such unholy power 
about his son. 

She was perched aloft on a little peak of rock a few yards 
away. The boy lay along the slope of it, clinging to her 
right hand. There was reverence in his manner. She was 
sacred to him and he to her in the religion of young love. 
Her left hand held the book she had spoken of. It rested 
like a harp on the wave of her thigh. Her feet were bare, 
though the air was cold; they were shapely feet. She was 
shapely everywhere, and there was a primeval grace, a love¬ 
liness about her every outline. Womanhood was disclosing 
its growth and its spell, straining at the scant and shabby 
dress and enveloping her in beauty like a drapery of mist. 

She might have been indeed the nymph of this pool, .lur¬ 
ing a faun to his death in a fatal element. But to RoBards 
the life-fearing little pauper had the terrifying power of a 
Lorelei throned on a storm-beaten cliff and chanting his 
hapless son to shipwreck. 

He wondered if the Lashers were not making ready to 
wreak upon his boy a roundabout revenge for what he had 
done to theirs. 

He was mortally afraid of this ragged girl. And there was 
nothing to tell him of the tremendous forces that were gather¬ 
ing to overwhelm this calamity with a greater. 


CHAPTER XLIII 


Afraid to intervene in this idyl; ashamed of the un- 
American snobbery that made him wince at the prospect 
of a Lasher for a daughter-in-law; aghast at the thought of 
having to ruin Aletta’s life after secretly taking her brother’s 
life; and humbled by the praise he had overheard her give 
him, RoBards was in the doldrums of uncertainty. 

He could not declare himself to the two lovesick children. 
He could not challenge them to a debate on the rights of 
youth to romance. He slunk from the field, glad only of 
being able to sneak away uncaught. 

As he hurried down the hill home to lay the problem be¬ 
fore Patty, the nearer he drew to her, the more clearly he 
foresaw that she would be less of a help in its solution than 
herself a new complication. 

She had suffered bitterly from Immy’s marriage to 
Chalender. The son growing up should have been a support; 
but Junior was bound to be an increasing burden. 

No, he must not tell Patty what he had learned. But he 
wanted to be near her in his own misery, and when he could 
not find her downstairs he went up to her room. 

She was so profoundly a-brood over some evident despair 
that she did not hear him push back the door, slightly ajar. 
He stood on the sill and studied her with the utter regret 
and impotency of a lover who cannot buy or fetch new 
beauty for the old beauty of his sweet, nor stay the waning 
of her radiance. 

As vainly as a girl muses upon her outgrown dolls; as 
vainly as Dido wished her love to come again to Carthage— 
Patty was scanning the fineries she had taken pride in up to 
the doomsday when her daughter married her own former 
lover. 


288 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


289 

She sat back and away from the bureau at a timid distance 
from the wonderful looking-glass RoBards had bought her 
not long ago as the novelty of the day: an oval reflector with 
a jointed rod to fasten above the large mirror, so that the 
back of one’s head was visible without turning and twisting. 
They called it the miroir face et nuque, and Patty had reveled 
in the ease it gave her in coiling the great braids and rolls 
of her coiffure. 

But RoBards felt that the new contrivance had taken away 
something charming in the mechanism of her toilet. Hitherto 
he had loved to watch her trying to bend her lithe frame 
spirally while her hands and arms dipped and tapped like 
twin swans as she labored over the last disposition of the 
least thread of her beautiful hair. He had found exquisite 
grace in her nymphlike contortions when she held her hand¬ 
glass in various places behind her head and tried to look 
around her own ears or up over her own eyebrows. He had 
laughed at her impossible efforts, but he had loved them. 

The miroir face et nuque had made the process more ef¬ 
ficient and less amusing. But now she was afraid to look at 
herself fore and aft, or at all. 

On the bureau was a bracelet she had rejoiced in when 
he brought it home as the latest importation from France: 
a jointed, green gold serpent to wrap round and round her 
wrist; it had a fierce diamond in its crest and bloodshot 
rubies for eyes. Next to it lay a tiny watch from Tiffany’s 
in a locket no bigger than a shilling; also another fantastic 
contrivance, a little diamond-sprinkled gold pocket-pistol 
with a watch in the butt, and, hidden beneath it, a vinaigrette 
against fainting spells; not to mention a bouquet-holder that 
popped out when you pulled the trigger. 

Spilled along the bureau was a loop of pearls her mother 
had worn ^s a bride; yellowed they were with years. And 
a necklace of tiny diamonds he had squandered an unex¬ 
pected fee upon after a quarrel. Often and often he had 
watched them luminously mysterious as they made a little 
brook around her throat and laughed silently above the pant¬ 
ing of her spent heart after a dance. 


290 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


But she would not wear them now. They were the loot of 
her youth, doomed to the museum of age. She sat cower¬ 
ing away from them, slumped with intentional lack of grace 
in a chair, her fingers nagging at a sandalwood and silken 
fan she had fluttered against her breast or dangled from her 
wrist in the last German she danced—a very riotous Ger¬ 
man that had made the town gasp. 

Never had RoBards loved her so much as at this moment. 
Never had she seemed so beautiful. But it was the beauty of 
a maple tree in autumnal elegy. He could not praise her 
aloud for this pitiable splendor. Still less could he tell her 
that one more of her babies was impatient to marry. 

Junior was Patty’s final toy. She spoiled him and wanted 
for him everything he wanted. But she could not wish him 
another woman to love, a young beauty to worship even to 
marriage. 

So RoBards said nothing more than a long-drawn “Well!” 
as he moved forward. He bent and kissed her and she smiled 
as she had done when she was in a bed of pain. 

Pain in her body or her heart hurt him fearfully. He 
hated the world most when it gave her pangs to endure. He 
rebelled against heaven then, and he could never reconcile 
himself to the thought of the Rod when it smote her. The 
text “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” always en- 
furiated him as the invention of a cruel zealot, ascribing 
to his invented Deity his own patience with other people’s 
pains. 

To-day, Robards longed most for some anaesthesia of the 
soul, some drug for the spirit, some nepenthe to avert and 
annul the slow surgery of age that excises the graces and 
leaves scars everywhere; he yearned for some mystic laugh¬ 
ing gas to give Patty to carry her through the news that 
another woman, a young woman, had wrenched her boy’s 
heart away from his mother. 

Lacking such an ether, he had recourse to a tender decep¬ 
tion, and urged that he must be getting back to town; he 
would shortly be needed in the law courts; he could not face 
the long evenings alone in New York without his beautiful 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


291 

wife for company. She beamed a little at his good inten¬ 
tions, and rose to be at her packing. 

This was better than an onset of grief, but he noted that 
she did not receive the word of a return to the city with her 
usual clamor of joy. 

It was her appetite that had dulled, and not the feast, for 
New York offered all its former riches multiplied. Already 
there were eight hundred thousand people in the welter of 
the city. It was greater than Rome had ever been. It had 
passed Berlin, which had lost a hundred thousand in the re¬ 
bellion of 1848—most of them freedom-loving souls who had 
come to America. New York was now ahead of Naples, 
Venice—of many a proud capital. John Pintard’s prophecy 
made at the beginning of the century still held good: he had 
predicted that the city would grow at such a rate that by the 
year 1900 it would have a population of five millions. 

He did not foresee the cataclysm that would sharply and 
suddenly cut its growth down to a third of what it had 
been. That cataclysm was now silently preparing, like the 
hushed strain that at its exact moment explodes an 
earthquake. 


CHAPTER XLIV 

THOUGH Patty greeted the decision to leave the country 
dumbly, the boy Junior emitted noise enough for two. 

When his father asked him what difference it made to him, 
he dodged awkwardly, talking of the beauty of the woods, the 
cider taste and fragrance of the air, the ugliness and noise 
of the city. He waxed so fervid that his father said: 

“You ought to go in for poetry as a business.” 

He could hardly accuse his son of hypocrisy, since he him¬ 
self was conniving in the secret for Patty’s sake. 

He closed the argument by reminding the boy that his 
classes at Columbia would soon require his presence. Where¬ 
upon Junior declared that he was too old to go to school any 
longer. He wanted to get out and make his own way in the 
world. He was a man now and—all the ancient refrain of 
the home-building instinct. 

It was a heartache to RoBards to see his child grown sud¬ 
denly old enough to be skewered with the darts of love; but 
the romance was premature and it must be suppressed ruth¬ 
lessly for the boy’s own sake. And for this growing pain 
also there was no ether. 

To town they went. 

For a while Junior’s melancholy was complete; then it 
suddenly vanished. He no longer spent his evenings at 
home writing long, long letters. He no longer went about 
with the eyes of a dying gazelle. 

Patty said: “He has forgotten his country sweetheart and 
found a city one.” 

From his superior information, RoBards made a shrewder 
guess that the Lasher girl had come to New York and was 
supporting herself somehow. He did not mention this sus¬ 
picion to Patty, but he tried to verify it by shadowing Junior 
through the streets as through the lanes. 

292 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


293 

New York, however, was a labyrinth of endless escapes. 
The boy seemed to know that he was followed and after a 
long and apparently aimless saunter, would always elude his 
pursuer. 

His father hunted through some of the dance halls, the 
gambling dives, through Castle Garden and other retreats 
where lovers sat like Siamese twins, enveloped in their 
ancient communions. But he never found Junior and he 
was ashamed to confess that he was searching, since his 
search was vain. 

He dared not ask the boy where he went lest he encourage 
him to lie, or to retort with impudent defiance. 

The eldest son, Keith, was thinking little of women. He 
was a man’s man, full of civic pride and municipal works. 
When he was at his business he took delight in being as 
dirty as possible. He wore the roughest clothes, left his jaws 
unshaven, talked big aqueduct talk. 

Then he would go to the other extreme and cleanse him¬ 
self to a foppery. But even this was mannishness, for he 
was a soldier. 

He loved his family, his city, his nation, and his was that 
patriotism which proves itself by an eagerness to be ready 
to defend his altars. 

“Any man who really loves his country,” he would say, 
“will keep himself strong enough to dig a ditch, build a wall, 
know a gun, and shoot it straight.” 

He had joined the Seventh Regiment as soon as he could 
get in, though everybody knew that there was no chance of 
war and the soldiers were counted mere dandies. 

Then a civil war broke out at home. New York City 
fought New York State. The Legislature at Albany, 
angered at the scandals of the city police, set up in its place 
a state police. Mayor Fernando Wood, who was always 
defying somebody, defied the Governor, the Legislature, the 
Supreme Court. 

The criminals reveled in the joyous opportunity while the 
two police forces fought each other. When a warrant was 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


294 

issued for the Mayor’s arrest the town police made the City 
Hall their citadel; the state police besieged it. 

The Seventh Regiment was marching down Broadway to 
take a boat to Boston for a gala week in honor of the new 
Bunker Hill monument. It passed by the battlefield of City 
Hall Park. Since it was a state force, its colonel marched 
into the park and demanded the surrender of the Mayor, 
who yielded forthwith. The Seventh thereupon went on its 
way with brass band blaring, all the youthful hearts per¬ 
suaded that they were invincible. 

The Seventh had hardly reached Boston when it was re¬ 
called to rescue the town from a venomous mob that gathered 
in the Five Points, put the police to flight, and promised 
to destroy the whole city. The mob broke on the bayonets 
of the Seventh after six men had been killed and a hundred 
wounded. 

Keith came home to his horrified mother with a few bumps 
on the head. She was still pleading with him the next day 
to resign from the perilous life when he was called out with 
his regiment to quell another riot. 

A little later there was a parade in honor of the laying of 
an Atlantic cable, which collapsed after two alleged messages 
were passed and was voted a gigantic hoax. But while the 
town laughed at it, the poor Seventh was dragged to Staten 
Island, where a thousand miscreants had set fire to the 
quarantine buildings. For three months Keith had to sit 
there on guard over the cold and malodorous ruins. 

When war of this sort was not afoot, there were the ever- 
recurrent parades under the hot sun, or in the fitful glare 
of the gas-lighted, banner-blazing nights. 

Very gay was the march past the two visiting princes from 
Japan, that strange new country opened six years before 
by Commodore Perry. The two royal delegates were almost 
drowned in wine. New York, just emerged from a few years 
of legal drouth, spent a hundred thousand dollars on an up¬ 
roarious reception at which champagne corks blurted by 
the thousand. 

Patty, as the daughter of an old Oriental shipping mer- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 295 

chant, went to that reception and wore a scarf of celestial 
weave and mountain-laurel color. One of the princes recog¬ 
nized the native stuff and advanced to Patty crying, “Me 
likee! me likee!” To prove how authentic the fabric was 
and how near and dear to him, he opened his silken robe at 
the breast and pointed to a most intimate garment for which 
there was no respectable name. It was of the very same 
material, and Patty might have swooned if her crinoline had 
not upheld her. 

His Highness’ two words were two more than she could 
speak, and he took from his sleeve a paper handkerchief, 
mopped his gleaming brow, and dropped it on the floor. 

Besides the Japanese princes, came the French Prince de 
Joinville, and Garibaldi, and finally the English heir apparent. 

The change in Patty’s soul was so profound that when 
the Prince of Wales came down from Canada and every¬ 
body fought for tickets to the ball in his honor as if it were 
Judgment Day itself, she made no plans at all. Could this 
be the same Patty, who, hitherto, would have bankrupted Ro- 
Bards for a supreme gown and played the Machiavel for a 
presentation ? 

When at last even RoBards noted her neglect, and asked 
her what she expected to wear, she sighed: 

“I shan’t go at all. It’s a long time since the newspapers 
referred to me as ‘the woman who was.’ The prince is nine¬ 
teen years old and he is not interested in grandmothers.” 

Then for love of her and for pride of her, RoBards must 
plead and compel. He must drive her to the dressmakers and 
whisper them that nothing should be spared to drape her so 
that an emperor would stare and a bashaw salaam. Men are 
odd cattle. He had stormed at her for years for extravagance 
and now he was outraged by an economy! 

Perhaps he was thinking a little of his own position as an 
important citizen, an American prince; but his chief zeal 
was in the defense of his beloved from that final fatal dis¬ 
couragement which ends a woman’s joy in this world. 

It was he, not Patty, that made sure of the invitation and 
toadied to Isaac Brown, the burly old sexton of Grace 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


296 

Church who decided who was to sit in what pew of his 
sacred edifice, and who was to be invited to any affair merit¬ 
ing the high epithet “genteel.” 

Even Ikey Brown recognized the solidity of Judge Ro- 
Bards and his lady, (who had been a Jessamine) and they 
received their tickets to the Academy of Music and, besides, 
the almost royal honor of dancing in the quadrille d’honneur. 

The over-crowded floor gave way with a crash and had 
to be rebuilt, but Patty escaped so much as the rumpling of 
her cherry satin train. When she was presented to the young 
prince, her husband fancied that he saw in those boyish eyes, 
so avid of beauty, a flash of homage for the graces that had 
not yet gone. The cinder was still fierce from the furnace. 

But Patty when she was at home again wept all night. 
The only excuse she would give was a whimpering regret 
that the far-away Immy could not have been there and 
danced with the prince. But RoBards knew that she 
mourned rather the yet more remote Patty of the long ago, 
who was no longer present within her tight stays and her 
voluminous paneled brocade. She wept over the grave of 
herself. 

The next night he understood the ravages of the years yet 
more keenly, for he must march as a veteran in the fire¬ 
men’s parade under the dripping, smoking, bobbing torches. 
Five thousand marched that night, and it was his last ap¬ 
pearance with the volunteers, whose own last days were 
numbered. Philadelphia and Cincinnati already had steam 
fire engines drawn by horses, and in a few years hired fire¬ 
men would replace the old foot-runners and hand-pumpers. 

As RoBards limped along on strangely flagging feet, he 
thought he caught a glimpse of his boy Junior and the Lasher 
girl at his side, standing arm in arm at the curb. But in 
the twinkling of an eye-lid they were gone. 

Keith had marched, of course, with the Seventh, but the 
Sixty-ninth, made up of Irishmen, had refused to pay honor 
to the Sassenach prince. Its colors were taken away and it 
drilled no more. 

When riot or parade or drill was not afoot, the aqueduct 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


297 


was forever haling Keith forth. For the restless town kept 
hewing down the hills that covered its upper regions, or 
cutting streets through and leaving houses perched in air. 
In 1840 the Water Commissioners had decided that the city 
would not reach Ninety-fourth Street “for a century or two” ; 
but it was crawling thither fast. 

Like sculptors who, as they carve off the clay, uncover the 
iron armature, the engineers were constantly disclosing anew 
their own deep-buried water mains and they must needs sink 
them still deeper. Often the pipes broke in their subterrene 
beds. This was like the rupture of an artery inside a man, 
and it required quick surgery to avert a fatal hemorrhage. 

On a December midnight in i860 two mains were rent open 
twenty feet below the ground at Sixty-fourth Street and 
Fifth Avenue. The upwelling flood turned the avenue into 
a swamp and endangered the foundations of certain new 
buildings. Fortunately, they were few and unimportant so 
far out of town, mainly crude shacks. 

But all the factories in town had to be ordered to cease 
the use of water, and the anxious city learned that the Croton 
was a vital aorta. The vast accumulation in the reservoir at 
Forty-Second Street was sucked down to within a foot of 
the bottom. 

Chief Engineer Craven had his men at work within thirty 
minutes of the disaster, and for fifty hours they dabbled in 
the muck, battling the leaping waters while new pipes were 
crowded in. 

Keith was among the fiercest toilers. He fought with the 
ardor of a Hollander at a broken dyke, and would not give 
over till he fell prone and had like to have drowned in the 
mud. 

Shortly after this there was a strange break in the sub¬ 
terranean financial waters: a mysterious panic shook the com¬ 
mercial peace of New York. The reservoirs of credit dried 
up over night. Bankers, the least unreliable of prophets, 
were smitten with a great terror, which their clients promptly 
shared. Its meaning was public all too soon. 

On December twenty-first there was another break in the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


298 

water mains at Sixty-fourth Street, where the pipes had 
been carried across a marsh in a raised embankment. 

As Keith worked with his men that morning his heart was 
shaken for the morning papers had shrieked the telegraphic 
news that, on the day before, the state of South Carolina 
had seceded from the Union, had actually carried out what 
nearly everybody had pooh-poohed as a silly threat. The 
South Carolina newspapers spoke of New York and other 
states as foreign countries. 

The Charleston Mercury proclaimed: “This is War.” 
New York bankers and merchants realized that they must, 
then, assume the chief burden of furnishing men, munitions, 
and money. 

RoBards’ heart sank within him. The great war had 
found him fifty-five years old. He would never get to a 
war, never fight for his country. 

But Patty’s heart leaped like a doe startled from a covert. 
It leaped with a cry: 

“My boy is in the first regiment that will go!” 


CHAPTER XLV 


The forty million Africans who had been raped from the 
Dark Continent and distributed among the Christian nations 
at so much per head, had made little active resistance to be¬ 
ing swallowed, but had proved hard to digest. The mis¬ 
sionary movements just begun had made little progress in 
Africa and some thought it an advantage to bring the 
Africans to the country where they could have the benefits 
of training in the true religion. But this training had a 
little too much to do with an education in the arts of blood¬ 
hounds, in the vigor of overseers’ whips and in the dramatic 
experiences of the auction block. 

This transplanted race threw off such myriads of mulattos, 
quadroons and octoroons that the situation had social com¬ 
plications : involving the future life as well as this. While 
most of the Americans were undoubtedly going to hell, those 
who were going to heaven were not comfortable at the pros¬ 
pect of flying around with black saints whose haloes might 
get caught in their kinky hair. People were saying that 
America “could not exist half black and half white”; some 
doubted if even heaven could exist half black and half 
white. 

The pestiferous abolitionists had survived mobs, courts, 
and the horror of being unfashionable. Even the churches 
could not keep infidels in their congregations from question¬ 
ing the manifest will of God, who in Mosaic law had im¬ 
posed and regulated slavery, and in the New Testament had 
commanded the return of a runaway slave. Numerous in¬ 
dividual clergymen had taken a conspicuous part in this form 
of sacrilege, but the great majority were true to their creeds, 
and denounced the heretics. The Methodist and other 
churches in official assemblies repeatedly disciplined their 

299 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


300 

anarchic parsons and forbade the attempt to stir up useless 
hostility by advocating “emancipation.” But the trouble- 
mongers would not be quieted. In spite of the efforts of the 
respectables, there was, as one New York writer put it, a 
“lamentable squandering of vast sums of money in an im¬ 
probable and visionary crusade, which might have conferred 
inestimable benefits had they not been diverted from the 
legitimate channels of Christian benevolence.” 

And now the outrageous disturbers had split the nation. 
Mayor Fernando Wood, having failed to secede from the 
state, proposed that New York City should secede from the 
Union. He was not heeded. Indeed a number of prominent 
citizens held a meeting in Pine Street and passed resolutions 
pleading with Mr. Jefferson Davis and the Southern gover¬ 
nors to return to the fold. RoBards was one of the signers 
of this appeal. 

To him and to others the great house of the republic could 
not be divided. It was a pity to let a herd of ignorant blacks 
disrupt the sacred compact. Numberless New Yorkers de¬ 
tested the abolitionists as heartily as the Southerners did. 

But the younger, hotter blood of the North demanded 
action. They did not care much for the niggers, but they 
hated the secessionists. Keith terrified Patty by his bel¬ 
ligerent tone. He wanted to set out at once and trample 
Richmond and Atlanta and Charleston into submission. 

Strangely, very strangely, his martial humor brought on 
a sudden amatory fever, and awoke a sudden interest in a 
certain young woman of an old and wealthy family: Frances 
Ward, a relative of the banker Ward who had moved into 
Bond Street when it began to rival St. John’s Park as a 
select region. 

At first Patty had been glad to have Keith seen about 
with the girl. Patty had a wholesome and normal amount of 
snobbery in her nature, and it pleased her to tell of the great 
people she had known, especially the Ward sisters. They 
had been called “The Three Graces of Bond Street,” until 
Julia had terrified everybody by going in for learning to an 
almost indecent extent. Six years younger than Patty, she 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


3 01 

had, at the age of seventeen, published a review and a trans¬ 
lation of a French book, reviewed German translations, and 
finally married an outright philanthropist. Dr. Howe. She 
had become an abolitionist and assistant editor of an anti¬ 
slavery paper! Not to mention her activities as a mother, 
a poetess, the author of a play produced at Wallack’s, and 
recently of a book on Cuba, which was forbidden circulation 
in that island. 

Still, much is forgiven to a banker’s daughter, and Patty 
encouraged Keith to cultivate the relative of Julia Ward 
Howe. Frances took the place of the aqueduct in Keith’s 
affections and Patty called her “the Nymph Crotona” in proud 
ridicule. Every evening when Keith was not at the Seventh 
Regiment in its armory over Tompkins market, he was at the 
home of Miss Ward, or out with her in one of the great 
sleighs that thrilled Broadway with tintinnabulation. 

Keith sighed at the thought of love and roared at the 
thought of war. He engaged in bitter wrangles with the 
supporters of the South, of whom there seemed to be more 
than there were enemies. Often he came home with knuckles 
bloody from the loosened teeth of disputants; but he washed 
the gore away and went forth to woo. 

Then suddenly he announced that he and Frances were 
to be married immediately without even the splendid ceremony 
that might have given Patty a medicine of excitement. She 
wailed aloud uncomforted. She was losing another child 
by the half-death of marriage. 

“I’d like to poison the girl,” she cried, “she’ll have me a 
grandmother in a year! Immy’s children are so far away 
they don’t count. Still, if it will keep Keith from the war, 
I’ll be a dozen grandmothers.” 

But Keith was not thinking of marriage as a substitute 
for war. It was a prelude. The war mood was causing a 
stampede toward matrimony. 

Death overspread the horizon like a black scythe sky-wide. 
Terror became a kind of rapture. Life looked brief; and 
every moment sweet because moments might be few. 

The warrior heart surged with the thought, “I may not be 


302 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

beating long.” The woman heart mourned: “My love who 
clasps me may soon lie cold in death on a muddy field.” 

Fear grew to a Bacchanal whose revelry is fierce because 
the drab dawn is near. Men were greedy in their demands 
and women reckless in their surrenders because their world 
was on the brink of doom. To the lover expecting the bugle 
to cry “March!” at daybreak, the night was desperate with 
crowded desires, and the beloved wondered if it were not less 
a virtue than a treason to deny him any last luxury she had 
to offer. 

It had been so in every war. It came so in this. It was 
the unsuspected tragic aspect of that ancient farce when 
Vulcan flung out his steel net and caught Mars and Venus 
in each other's arms; exposed them to the laughter of the / 
gods. But the laughter of the gods is the suffering of the 
clods; and with war hovering, amours that had been disgrace¬ 
ful in peace looked pitiful, beautiful, patriotic. 

Keith was married on a Thursday in April and set out 
for a brief honeymoon at Tuliptree Farm. The next day the 
nation’s flag at Fort Sumter was fired on. The next day 
after that—the thirteenth it was—Major Anderson saluted 
the flag with fifty guns before he surrendered. The Sunday 
Herald carried the headline “Dissolution of the Union” and 
stated that on the night before a mass meeting had been held 
to force the administration to desist from Mr. Lincoln’s ex¬ 
pressed intention to coerce the seceding states. But the 
challenge and the insult to the Stars and Stripes stung most 
of the waverers into demanding the blood of the insolent 
Southrons. 

Monday morning Mr. Lincoln called for seventy-five 
thousand militia to devote three months to suppressing the 
Rebellion. Nobody thought it would take that long, but it 
was well to be safe. 

The New York Legislature voted the amazing sum of three 
million dollars; the Chamber of Commerce whereas’d and 
resolved that the Southern ports should be blockaded; a hun¬ 
dred thousand people held a mass meeting in Union Square. 
Patty was there, telling everybody that when she was a girl 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


303 

Union Square was a paupers’ cemetery out in the country. 
Judge RoBards was one of the eighty-seven vice-presidents 
selected, along with Peter Cooper and historian Bancroft and 
W. C. Bryant, Mr. William Bond, Mr. J. J. Astor, Mr. 
Lorillard, Mr. Hewett, Mr. Morgan, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Fish 
—all the big ones. 

The militia offered itself with a heroism all the finer for 
the fact that it lacked only uniform, equipment, ammunition, 
drill, organization, officers and men, and knowledge of war 
and of the more perilous problems of taking care of the feet 
and the bowels. 

One regrettable effect of the war spirit was the boldness 
of some of the women. The ridiculous suffragists linked 
female freedom with black liberty and asked that white 
women be granted what black men were to receive. This 
impudence was properly quelled, but, in spite of all the op¬ 
position, the regrettable influence of Florence Nightingale 
encouraged restless women to offer their services in nursing 
—a nasty business hitherto mainly entrusted to drunken and 
dissolute women of the jails. 

Before the wretched war was over, two thousand Amer¬ 
ican women had drifted into the most unladylike of activ¬ 
ities. Sane people feared that what was begun in war 
would be continued in peace, and that before long ladies 
would be studying physiology and other subjects, at the 
very mention of which nice females had fainted in the good 
old times. 

While New York City was going mad with battle-ardor, 
up in Westchester County a teacher in the city public schools 
began to form a company called “The Westchester 
Chasseurs.” 

One of the first to join was a lout named Gideon Lasher. 
RoBards saw the name in a paper and it gave his heart a 
twist. 

There was a mad explosion of war feeling and the ir¬ 
resistible noise of war when the Sixth Massachusetts came 
to town one night on the boat. The next morning the New 
Englanders went up Broadway with a thumpity-thumpity- 


304 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

thump of drums and had breakfast at the Astor House; then 
marched with gleaming bayonets and Yankee-Doodling fifes 
and rolling standards through a sea of people. They niet 
death first in the Baltimore streets. 

On Friday afternoon the Seventh New York pushed 
through the mob of fathers, mothers, wives, sweethearts, 
sisters, brothers, on its way to the transports. It hurried to 
the §alvation of Washington, where the Government was said 
to be packed in a valise for a backdoor escape. 

Patty marched down Broadway clinging to the arm of 
Keith, embarrassing him wonderfully, and none the less for 
the fact that she crowded his wife aside. 

Wives and mothers and girls betrothed were all agog over 
madly sweet farewells. There was a civil war of love about 
Keith. 

After a brief jostling match with Patty, Frances gave up 
the struggle and with a last fierce hug and a hammering of 
kisses, fell away into the mass of crumpled crinolines at 
the curb and was lost to Keith’s backward gaze. 

His heart ran to her but he could not rebuke the 
triumphant laugh of his mother, who scuttered alongside, 
with hardly equal steps clinging to him so tight that her hoop 
skirts must bulge out sidewise and brush the throngs. She 
was no longer the radiant beauty, but only a frightened little 
old lady whose child was striding off to all that a mother’s 
heart could imagine for her anguish. And at last the hard 
cobbles broke her little feet and made them bleed as her 
heart bled. Her breath came in such quick gasps that she 
could not speak. Her breath became a drumming of sobs 
and her eyes spilled so many tears that she could not mind 
her way. Finally, realizing that her stumbling threw her 
soldier out of step and out of the alignment of which the 
Seventh was so proud; realizing blindly that her grief was 
beginning to break his pride and would send him to war 
blubbering, she panted: 

“Kiss me good-by, oh, my little boy, for I must let you 

He bent his head and drenched her cheeks with his tears, 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


305 

as their lips met in salt. The soldier behind him jostled his 
heel and forced him along. And that was the last he saw 
of his mother for four years. 

Patty was flung back from the edges of the companies, 
going by like the blades of a steamer’s wheel. She got home 
somehow, and it was no consolation to her that thousands 
of other mothers joined her in despair as regiment after regi¬ 
ment filled Broadway with the halloo of trumpets and the 
thud of warward feet. 

The Irish Sixty-ninth had not drilled since it refused to 
honor the Prince of Wales, but now Colonel Corcoran begged 
that the colors should be restored, and promised to march a 
thousand men in twenty-four hours. He got his prayer and 
kept his word. And the Sixth and Twelfth and the Seventy- 
first, and the Eighth and the Twenty-eighth and the others 
went forth into the dark, so that numerals took on a sacred 
significance once more. 

Day after day, night after night, the streets throbbed like 
the arteries of men who have been running. The glory and 
the pride of war made hearts ache with a grandeur of neigh¬ 
borliness. The religion of nationhood became something 
awesome like the arrival of a new all-conquering deity upon 
the mountain tops. Suddenly the words “My Country” con¬ 
jured a creed. People vied with one another to die in proof 
of their fealty to this vague thing that but yesterday had been 
a politician’s joke, a schoolboy’s lesson in geography. This 
flag that had been a color scheme for decorating band stands 
on Fourths of July became an angel’s wing streaked with 
blood, a thing that filled the eyes with tears, the soul with 
hosannas. 

Then the hilarious victory of the Bull Run picnic was 
turned into a panic of disaster, of shame, of dismay. Lists 
of dead men became news, and the poor citizens gnashed 
their teeth upon their grief, understanding how grim and 
long a game they had begun. Whichever side won the game, 
both must lose infinitely precious treasures only now valued 
truly. 

All the songs were war songs; all the love-stories had 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


306 

either warriors or skulkers involved; the rejoicings were over 
the disasters of other Americans, other mothers and fathers ; 
the highest of arts was the art of destruction; the zest of 
life was in slaughtering and enduring. Life had more 
beauty and glory than ever but no more prettiness, no grace. 

One day RoBards brought home the paper, and after as¬ 
suring Patty that Keith’s name was not in any of the gory 
catalogues, he said: 

“Our relative-in-law—Cousin Julia Ward Howe—has 
broken into poetry again. It’s a war poem, very womanly 
for a blue-stocking; not bad.” 

Patty took the paper and glanced at it carelessly. Being 
about silks the verses caught her and her smile became a 
look of pain. RoBards said, “Read it aloud to me. I used 
to love to hear you read aloud.” 

She read. And because of the miracle there is in the 
voice, especially to him in her voice, the poem seemed to 
him a thing of deeper sorrow and more majesty than any 
of the bombast that filled the press. It was a dirge for 
beautiful glad things: 

“Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms, 

To deck our girls for gay delights! 

The crimson flower of battle blooms, 

And solemn marches fill the nights. 

“Weave but the flag whose bars to-day 
Drooped heavy o’er our early dead, 

And homely garments, coarse and gray, 

For orphans that must earn their bread. 

“Keep back your tunes, ye viols sweet, 

That poured delight from other lands! 

Rouse there the dancer’s restless feet: 

The trumpet leads our warrior bands. 

“And ye that wage the war of words 
With mystic fame and subtle power, 

Go, chatter to the idle birds, 

Or teach the lesson of the hour! 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


307 


“Ye Sibyl Arts, in one stern knot 
Be all your offices combined! 

Stand close, while Courage draws the lot, 

The destiny of human kind.” 

Patty’s voice died away on the last stanza. RoBards, the 
lawyer, the pleader, the juggler of words like cannon balls, 
admired the exalted phrases, the apostrophic strain, but 
Patty was touched only by the first and third stanzas and 
like a mournful nightingale she warbled softly to a little 
tune made up of reminiscences of the opera: 

“Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms.” 

Only as she trilled it it ran: 

“We-e-e-eave no mo-o-ore silks, ye Ly-y-ons loo-oo-oo- 
ooms.” 

It got caught in her thoughts and ran through her head 
for weeks, until unconsciously she was always crooning or 
whispering the haunting syllables. 

It was odd that a city-bred banker’s daughter should have 
written the most graceful of war elegies. It was odder yet 
that in a still darker hour when discouragement gripped the 
unsuccessful North and recruits were deaf to the call, this 
same woman should fire the country with the most majestic 
of battle-hymns: 

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. 

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath 
are stored.” 

A shy little wife of a preacher wrote the most successful 
novel ever written, and brought on the war; and a banker’s 
daughter gave it its noblest voice. 

No wonder that women were getting out of hand, and 
questioning the ancient pretense of the male; calling his bluff. 
That song chanted everywhere to the forward-marching 
tune of “John Brown’s Body” started a new current of vol¬ 
unteers and brought the final resolution to many a hesitant 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


308 

patriot. And Patty was proud again to claim relationship 
to the daughter of money and of song. 

But the Battle Hymn seemed to harrow the soul of her 
boy Junior. There were dark secrets back of his eyes. 
Patty would fling her arms about him to shut out the Lorelei- 
appeal of the bugles that rang through the streets calling, 
calling. She tried to hide from his eyes the uniforms that 
shamed his civilian clothes. And she would plead: 

“Don’t leave me, Junior boy! Don’t leave your poor old 
mother! I’ve got a right to keep one son, haven’t I? 
Promise me you won’t go.” 

He would pet her and kiss her, but never quite give the 
pledge she implored. 

Then one day while Patty was standing at the window 
and her husband was reading in a newspaper the story of 
the heroisms and tragedies of his neighbors’ sons, Patty 
cried out: 

“Mist’ RoBards, look! Come quick!” 

He ran to her side and peered through the glass. 

Below was a youth in uniform clinging to the iron fence, 
waveringly. RoBards said: 

“It’s just some young soldier who has drunk too many 
toasts.” 

He turned back to his paper, but Patty whirled him round 
again: 

“No, no, no! It’s Junior! He’s in uniform! He’s 
afraid to come in and break my heart!” 

RoBards’ own heart seemed to feel the grip of a ter¬ 
rible hand, wringing the blood out of it; but he caught 
Patty to him and held her fast as if to hold her soul to its 
treadmill duty. He mumbled: 

“You’re not going to make it too hard for him?” 

She shook her head; but tears were flung about, glittering. 
Her frowning brows seemed to squeeze her very brain, to 
compel it to bravery. Then she ran to the washbasin and 
bathed her eyes, slapped them with cold water, and rouged 
and powdered her cheeks, to flirt with despair! She straight- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


309 

ened herself like an orderly sergeant a moment, saluted, and 
said: “Now!” 

Then she ran down the stairs, opened the front door, 
and called: 

“Come in here, you big beautiful soldier!” 

When Junior shambled up the steps with awkward pol¬ 
troonery, she clapped her hands and admired: 

“My, my, my! how handsome we are! Til bet the Johnny 
Rebs will just climb over one another to get out of your 
way.” 

Junior was fooled by her bravado. He breathed deep 
of the relief of escaping both her protest and the shame of 
not going for a soldier. He was young and innocent, but 
RoBards was old enough to know what abysmal gloom was 
back of Patty's jocund eyes. 

On his last night in town, Junior was away for two hours. 
When he came home, he said he had been at the armory; 
but he was so labored in his carelessness that Patty laughed: 

“Did she cry very hard?” 

Junior did not even smile at that. There was not much 
fun in Patty’s laugh, either. 

The next morning she rejoined the multitudes that 
crowded the curbs and waved wet handkerchiefs at the 
striding soldiery while the high walls of Broadway shops 
flung back and forth the squealing fifes and thrilling drums 
and the ululant horns. 


CHAPTER XLVI 


THERE was acrid humiliation for RoBards in his inability 
to take a soldier's part in the field. He did what he could 
on the countless boards, but he longed to be young, to ride 
a snorting charger along a line of bayonets, or to shoulder a 
rifle and jog over the dusty roads to glory in the flaming 
red breeches and short jacket of a Zouave. The very 
children were little Zouaves now in tiny uniforms with 
tiny weapons. One could not walk the streets without 
breaking through these infantile armies. 

RoBards had no military training and even the increasingly 
liberal standards of the recruiting boards would not let him 
through to add one more to the vast army that camp fever 
and dysentery sent to futile graves. Most of all, he dared 
not leave Patty alone with no man to comfort her. 

Yet Harry Chalender, who was no younger than he and 
led the most irregular of lives, managed to do the hand¬ 
some thing—as always. Since California, with no railroads 
to link it to the East, could hardly send many troops to the 
war, Chalender left the Golden State, sped around the 
Horn, and appeared in New York. 

The first that RoBards knew of this was the flourish 
in the newspapers: “With characteristic gallantry and public 
spirit, Captain Harry Chalender has abandoned his interests 
in California and come all the way to his native heath to lay 
his untarnished sword on the altar of his country.” 

RoBards hated himself for hating Chalender for being 
so honorable a man; but he could not oust from his heart 
the bitter thought that Chalender was rendering him one 
more insult. 

Chalender had saved his life, dishonored his wife, married 
his daughter, surpassed him in every way as a captor of the 

310 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


3ii 

hearts of women and men, as a breaker of the laws of God 
and man, and as a public servant and a patriot. And 
RoBards was bound and gagged and could not protest or 
denounce except in his own dark heart. 

There was scant salve for his hurts in the low groan of 
wrath from Patty as she flung the paper to the floor: 

“If he dares come to our house! if he dares!” 

But Chalender with that almost infallible intuition of his 
for escaping bad quarters-of-an-hour, sent merely a gay 
little note: 

“Dear Papa and Mamma-in-law: 

“It grieves me deeply to be unable to call and pay you both 
my filial devoirs, but I am to be shipped South at once for 
cannon-fodder. 

“Our dear Immy sent you al! sorts of loving messages, which 
I beg you to imagine. She is well and beautiful and would be 
the belle of San Francisco if she were not so devoted a mother 
to the three perfect grandchildren, whom you have never seen. 

“ ‘When this cruel war is over/ as the song goes, I shall hope 
to come tramp-tramp-tramping to your doorstep. Until then 
and always be assured, dear Patty and David (if I may be so 
familiar) that I am 

The most devoted of 

“Sons-in-law.” 

The next day's paper told of his departure as the lieuten¬ 
ant colonel of a new regiment. Before the regiment reached 
the front, he was its colonel owing to the sudden demise 
of his superior. People died to get out of his way! 

The next they knew he was shot in the throat as he led a 
magnificent and successful charge. He drew a dirty hand¬ 
kerchief through the red tunnel, remounted, and galloped 
to the head of his line and hurdled the Confederate breast¬ 
works as if he were fox-hunting again in Westchester. As 
soon as possible he was brevetted a brigadier and with 
uncanny speed a major general of Volunteers. His men 
adored him and while other generals rose and fell in a sicken¬ 
ing reiteration of disasters, his own command always shone 
in victory or plucked a laurel from defeat. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


212 

His nickname was “Our Harry” or “Harry of Navarre,” 
but patriot as RoBards was, he could find no comfort in the 
triumphs that led the neighbors to exclaim: 

“By gollies, it must make you proud to be the father-in- 
law of such a military genius ! It’s a shame Old Abe don’t 
give him a chance like he gives those blundering butchers 
he picks out.” 

Poor RoBards had to agree publicly that he was proud of 
New York’s pet, but Patty would not stoop to such 
hypocrisy. She would snap at Chalender’s partisans: 

“Surely you can’t expect a good word for the wretch from 
his mother-in-law.” 

To escape from the irony of these eulogies, Patty and 
David went up to Tuliptree, though it kept them longer from 
the newspapers, and the daily directories of killed, wounded, 
and missing which made almost their only reading. 

One day Patty came across a paragraph in one of the 
Westchester papers that called Lincoln a “tyrant,” and a 
“buffoon,” and the Abolitionists “cowards,” in terms hardly 
to be expected north of Mason and Dixon’s line. She read 
it to RoBards: 

“Among the most recent victims of Abe Lincoln’s iniqui¬ 
tous war is Corporal Gideon Lasher of Kensico, who was 
murdered at Elmira while arresting a deserter. He had 
been previously wounded at Brandy Station during the 
advance from Rappahannock.” 

Patty looked up from the paper and said: 

“Gideon Lasher! Could he have been a brother of the 
Lasher who-” 

RoBards did not start. He nodded idly. It all seemed 
so far off, so long ago as hardly to concern themselves at all. 
They had almost forgotten what the word Lasher meant 
to them. 

And when on his way to the railroad station he met Mrs. 
Lasher he found her so old and worn-witted that she, 
too, had almost no nerves to feel sorrow with. She almost 
giggled: 

“They tell me my boy Gideon’s dead. Yes, sir; he went 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


3i3 


and got himself kilt, up yonder in Elmiry. Funny place to 
get kilt, way up north yonder! I can’t say as I’ve had much 
luck with my fambly. Jud—you remember him likely, sir?— 
he never came home from sea. Went a-whalin’, and ne’er 
a word or sign of him sence I don’t know when. My daugh¬ 
ter Aletty—she’s in town up to some mischief, I s’pose. 
Well, it’s the way of the world, ain’t it? Them as has, gets; 
them as hasn’t, doosn’t.” 

War or no war, RoBards found cases to try. There was 
a mysterious prosperity hard to account for in many busi¬ 
nesses. Cases poured in on RoBards. Fees were high. 
However the tide of battle rolled in the South, the trades 
of life went on somehow, and petty quarrels over lands and 
wills and patent rights were fought out as earnestly as ever. 

One evening as he set out for the Kensico train, he bought 
a paper, and found the name he had been looking for every 
day in the list. 

He was benumbed by the blow and all the way home sat 
with his elbows on his knees and sagged like a bankrupt 
in the courts. He could hardly understand what it would 
mean if his namesake boy should no more be visible upon 
the earth. He hardly dared to grieve as a father must 
mourn for a lost son; for he thought of Patty and the 
necessity for carrying to her the news. 

In his heart there was always a great wish that he might 
never come to her without bringing some gift of flowers, 
jewels, or at least good cheer. And he was always bringing 
her sorrow! 

But that was marriage and it could not be escaped. He 
must try to be a little glad that evil tidings should be carried 
to her by one who loved her and would share her grief. 

She was scraping lint for wounded soldiers when he came 
in as usual with the paper that he always brought home from 
his office. But there was a look about him, about the way 
he held the paper that shook her as if the house were a tocsin 
smitten with a sledge. Their colloquy was brief: 

“Patty.” 

“Has it come?” 


314 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


“Yes, honey!” 

“Keith?” 

“No.” 

“Junior!” 

“Yes, sweet.” 

“Wounded?” 

“Worse.” 

“Oh, not dead?” 

“Missing.” 

This was the bitterest word to hear, for it carried suspense 
and dreadful possibilities. Was he a captive to suffer the 
horrors of Southern prison camps where the jailers starved 
with the prisoners? Was he lying wounded and perishing 
slowly under some bush in the enemy’s lines, in the rain, at 
the mercy of ants, flies, wounds uncleansed ? Was he shiver¬ 
ing with mortal cold and no mother to draw a blanket over 
him? Was he among the unidentified slain? Had he run 
away in a disease of cowardice? Would he come home 
crippled ? Insane ? 

Days and days dragged by before the papers answered 
their questions. Then it helped a little to know that, since 
their boy had died, he had died quickly, and had brought 
honor to the family in the manner of his taking-off. 

In a series of bloody charges upon a line of high breast¬ 
works on a hilltop, three standard bearers had been shot 
down—each snatching the flag before it struck the earth. 
The dead were piled up with the writhing wounded and they 
were abandoned by the Union troops as they fell back and 
gave up the costly effort. 

Under a flag of truce they pleaded for the privilege of 
burying their dead. Deep in the wall of Northern bodies, 
they found a boy with his blouse buttoned tight about him. 
A glimpse of bright color caught the eye of the burial party 
and his story told itself. Evidently Junior had been shot 
down with the flag he had tried to plant on the barrier. As 
he writhed and choked he had wrenched his bayonet free 
and sawed the colors from the staff, wrapped them around 
his body and buttoned his blouse over them to save them 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


3 I 5 

from falling into the hands of the enemy. Death found 
him with his thumb and finger frozen on the last button. 

The hideousness of the boy’s last hour was somehow 
transformed to beauty by the thought of him swathed in 
the star-dotted blue and the red and white stripes. He had 
been thinking solemnly, frantically all his last moments of 
a flag. 

Patty was not so jealous of this mystic rival as she might 
have been if he had been found with some girl’s picture 
in his hand. For the first time, indeed, the flag became holy 
to her. In her heart, her son’s blood sanctified it, rather 
than it him. 

Her sorrow was hushed in awe for a long while and her 
eyes were uplifted in exaltation that was almost exultant. 
Then a wall of tears blinded them and she saw the glory no 
more, only the pity of her shattered boy unmothered in his 
death-agony. 

She clutched her breasts with both hands, clawed them 
as if they suffered with her for the lips they had given suck 
to, the lips that they and she would never feel again. 

She put on the deepest mourning, drew thick veils about 
her, and moved like a moving cenotaph draped in black. 
She became one of the increasing procession of mothers who 
had given their sons to the nation. They had pride, but 
they paid for it. 

She watched other mothers’ sons hurrying forth under the 
battle standards slanting ahead and the flags writhing back¬ 
ward, and it did not comfort other women to see her; for she 
was a witness of the charnel their children entered. 

The call for three months’ volunteers had been amended 
to a larger demand for two years’ enlistments, and then to 
a larger still for three years. The failure of the North to 
uphold the Union bred a growing distrust of its ability to 
succeed, a doubt of its right to succeed, a hatred for its 
leaders. 

And always there was the terror that the next list would 
carry the name of the other son she had lent to the nation 
with no security for his return. She had Keith’s wife for 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


316 

companion, and they multiplied each other’s fears. Patty 
had the excuse of knowing what havoc there was in war. 
Frances had the excuse of her condition. She was carrying 
a child for some future war to take away from her. 

When Keith’s baby was born, Keith was in the travail of 
a battle and the baby was several weeks old before the news 
reached him that the wife he had not seen for nearly a 
year had given him a son that he might never see. 

Patty made the usual grandmother, fighting vainly for 
ideas that her daughter-in-law waived as old-fashioned, 
just as Patty had driven her mother frantic with her once 
new-fangled notions. 

She felt as young as she had ever felt and it bewildered 
her to be treated as of an ancient generation. She resented 
the reverence due her years a little more bitterly than the 
contempt. 

“I won’t be revered!” she stormed. “Call me a fool or 
a numskull; fight me, but don’t you dare treat me with 
deference as if I were an old ninny!” 

RoBards understood her mood, for he felt once more 
the young husband as he leaned over his grandson’s cradle 
and bandied foolish baby words with an infant that retorted 
in yowls and kicks or with gurglings as inarticulate as a 
brook’s, and as irresistible. 

One day at his office where he sat behind a redoubt of 
lawbooks, he glanced up to smile at a photograph of his 
grandchild, and caught the troubled look of a young man 
who was reading law in his office. 

“Well?” he said. 

“Begging your pardon, sir, there’s a young woman out¬ 
side wants to see you. Says her name is—her name is— 
is-” 

RoBards snapped at him: 

“Speak up, man. What’s the terrible name?” 

“Mrs. David RoBards, Junior.” 

This word “Junior” wrenched an old wound open and 
RoBards whipped off his glasses shot with instant tears. He 
snarled less in anger than in anguish: 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


3i7 


“What are you saying? My poor boy had no wife.” 

“So I told her, sir. But she insists he did, and—and— 
well, hadn’t you better see her? I can’t seem to get rid of 
her.” 

RoBards rose with difficulty and stalked forth. Leaning 
against the rail in the outer office was a shabby mother 
with a babe at her frugal breast. RoBards spread his elbows 
wide to brace himself in the door while he fumbled for his 
distance glasses. 

They brought to his eyes with abrupt sharpness the wist¬ 
ful face of Aletta Lasher, as he had seen her perched on 
the rock in the Tarn of Mystery that day, when she be¬ 
moaned her helpless love for his son. 

She came to him now, slowly, sidlingly, the babe held 
backward a little as if to keep it from any attack he might 
make. To verify his wild guesses, he said: 

“My clerk must have misunderstood your name. May I 
ask it?” 

“I am Mrs. David RoBards—Junior. This is our little 
girl.” 

“But Junior—my boy Junior—is-” 

“I am his widow, sir.” 

“But, my dear child, you—he-” 

“We were married secretly the day before he marched 
with his regiment. He was afraid to tell you. I was afraid 
to come to you, sir, even when I heard of his beautiful 
death. You had sorrow enough, sir; and so had I. I 
shouldn’t be troubling you now, but I don’t seem to get 
strong enough to go back to work, and the baby—the baby— 
she doesn’t belong to me only. You might not forgive me if 
I let her die.” 

The baby laughed at such a silly word, flung up two 
pink fists and two doll’s feet in knit socks, and said some¬ 
thing in a language that has never been written but has 
never been misunderstood. The purport of its meaning 
brought RoBards rushing to the presence. He looked down 
past the sad eyes of Aletta into the sparkling little eyes of 
all mischief. The finger he touched the tiny hand with was 




318 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

moistly, warmly clasped by fingers hardly more than grape 
tendrils. 

“Come in,” said RoBards. “Let me carry the baby.” 

He motioned Aletta to the chair where never so strange 
a client had sat, and questioned her across the elusive arm¬ 
load that pulled his neckscarf awry and beat him about the 
face as with young tulip leaves. 

Aletta had brought along her certificate of marriage to 
prove her honesty and she told a story of hardships that 
added the final confirmation, and filled RoBards with respect 
for her. His new-found daughter had been as brave as his 
new-lost son. 

But he dared not commit himself. He took the half- 
starved girl in his carriage—he kept a carriage now—to St. 
John’s Park to consult his partner in this grandchild. 

He left Aletta in the parlor and went up the stairs with 
the baby. Sometimes when he had a woman for a client 
he found it best to put her on the witness stand and let her 
plead her own case to the jury. So he took the baby along 
now. 

When he entered Patty’s room she was sitting rocking 
by the window gazing into nowhere. Her hands held a 
picture of Junior, and as RoBards paused he could see the 
few slow tears of weary grief drip and strike. 

He could find no first word. It was the baby’s sudden 
gurgle that startled Patty. She turned, stared, rose, came to 
him, smiling helplessly at the wriggling giggler. Up went 
two handlets to buffet her cheeks as she bent to stare. She 
took the creature from her husband’s arms, lifting it ‘till 
its cheek was silken against her own. For a little while 
she basked in contentment unvexed by curiosity, before she 
asked: 

“And whose baby is this?” 

“Yours,” said RoBards. 

“My baby? What do you mean? Who was it came 
in with you?” 

“Your daughter and mine—a new one we didn’t know we 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


319 

had. Honey, this is the little daughter of our blessed boy 
Junior.” 

While RoBards was resolving her daze into an under¬ 
standing of the situation, the child was pleading away her 
resentment, her suspicion. Before she knew the truth she 
was eager to have it true. She needed just that sort of toy 
to play with to save her from going mad with age and 
uselessness. 

The hungry baby beat at her dry bosom in vain, but 
shook her heart with its need. 

She felt too weak to trust herself to the stairway and 
asked RoBards to bring Aletta up. She waited in that 
great terror in which a mother meets a strange daughter- 
in-law. But when the girl came into the room, so meek, 
so pale, so expectant of one more flogging from life, Patty, 
who would have met defiance with defiance, set forth a hand 
of welcome and drawing the girl close, kissed her. 

There were many embarrassing things to say on either 
side, but before the parley could begin, the baby intervened 
with the primeval cry for milk. There was no talking in 
such uproar and Aletta, noting that RoBards was too stupid 
to retreat, turned her back on him and, laying the child across 
her left arm, soon had its anger changed to the first primeval 
sound of approval. 

After a while of pride at the vigorous notes of smacking 
and gulping, Patty murmured: 

“What’s its name?” 

“She has no name but Baby,” Aletta sighed. “I have 
been so alone, with nobody to advise me that I—I didn’t 
know what to call her.” 

Patty hardly hesitated before she said with a hypocritical 
modesty: 

“I don’t think much of Tatty’ for a name but Mist’ 
RoBards us6d to like it.” 

Aletta gasped: “Oh, would you let my baby have your 
name ?” 

“Your baby is too beautiful for a name I’ve worn out. 
But how would you like to call her by the name that was 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


320 

my last name when I was a girl like you? ‘J essam i ne ’ is 
right pretty, don’t you think?” 

“Jessamine RoBards!” Aletta sighed in a luxury, and 
added with a quaint bookishness. “It’s another term for 
Jasmine. I had a little jasmine plant at home. Oh, but it 
was sweet, and fragrant! My poor mother always said 
it was her favorite perfume. She used almost to smile 
when it was in bloom.” 

This mention of her mother, their neighbor once so de¬ 
spised, since so dreaded, gave Patty and David a moment’s 
pause. But only a moment’s, for the little pink'-link that 
united the Lasher with the RoBards stock, as if accepting 
the name she had waited for so long, began to crow and 
wave her arms in all the satisfaction of being replete with 
the warm white wine of a young mother’s breast. 

And the grandparents embraced each other and their new 
daughter as they meditated on the supine quadruped that 
filled their lonely house with unsyllabled laughter. 

When later Mrs. Keith RoBards came round to call with 
her richly bedizened and bediapered son, Patty had such 
important news to tell her, that Keith Junior’s nose would 
have been put out of joint if it had been long enough to 
have a joint. 

In gratifying contrast with Frances’ autocratic mother¬ 
hood, Aletta was so ignorant, or tactfully pretended to be, 
and so used to being bullied, so glad of any kindness, that 
Patty took entire command of the fresh jasmine-flower and 
was less a grandmother than a miraculously youthful mother 
—for a while, for a respite-while before the world renewed 
the assaults it never ceases long to make upon the happiness 
of every one of its prisoners. 


CHAPTER XLVII 


Having lost one son in the war and expecting to hear 
at any moment that her other boy was gone, Patty was 
bitter now against the mothers who kept their sons at home, 
as she had tried to keep hers. 

The fear grew that the war, which had already cost her 
so dear, might be lost for lack of men to reinforce the 
Federal troops. Those whom the first thrill had not swept 
off their feet, found self-control easier and easier when they 
were besought to fill the gaps left by the sick, the crippled and 
the dead in the successless armies. 

Their apathy woke to action, however, when the hateful 
word Conscription was uttered by the desperate administra¬ 
tion. The draft law was passed, and it woke a battle ardor 
in those who cling to peace whenever their country is at war. 
For there has always been about the same proportion of 
citizens who are inevitably against the government, what¬ 
ever it does. Sometimes they prate of loyalty to a divinely 
commissioned monarch or a mother country, as in Wash¬ 
ington’s day; sometimes they love the foreigner so well that 
they denounce a war of conquest, as in the Mexican war; 
sometimes they praise the soft answer and the disarming 
appeal of friendly counsel, as in this war with the fierce 
South. 

Now, when the draft lowered, the New York pacifists 
mobilized, set the draft-wheels on fire and burned the offices 
and such other buildings as annoyed them. They abused 
Lincoln as a gawky Nero, and, to prove their hatred of war, 
they formed in mobs and made gibbets of the lamp-posts 
where they set aswing such negroes as they could run down. 

They killed or trampled to death policemen and soldiers, 
insulted and abused black women and children, and, in a 

321 


3 22 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


final sublimity of enthusiasm, grew bold enough to charge 
upon the Negro Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue near the 
Reservoir. Somebody led the two hundred pickaninnies 
there to safety through the back door while the mob stormed 
the front, and burned the place to ashes. 

For three days the city was a monstrous madhouse with 
the maniacs in control. Thousands descended on the cen¬ 
tral police station and would have destroyed it if a few hun¬ 
dred police had not flanked them with simultaneous charges 
down side streets, and clubbed them into a stampede. 

Editors who supported the government would have joined 
the black fruit ripening on the lamp-posts if Mr. Raymond’s 
Times had not mounted revolving cannon in its defense and 
Mr. Greeley’s Tribune had not thrust long troughs out of its 
upper windows as channels for bombshells to drop into the 
rabble. 

Troops came hurrying to the city’s rescue and sprinkled 
canister upon certain patriots to disperse them. Then and 
only then the war-hating wolves became lambs again. The 
Seventh was recalled too late to defend the city from itself, 
but Keith did not come home with it. He had been com¬ 
missioned to another regiment. A thousand lives had been 
lost in the Draft Riots, but the rioters were unashamed. 

The Governor had called them “my friends” and promised 
them relief; the draft had been suspended and the city 
council had voted two millions and a half, so that those 
who were too poor to afford substitutes could have them 
bought by the city ready-made at six hundred dollars apiece. 

In Westchester County rails had been torn up, wires cut, 
and drafting lists set ablaze, and mobs had gone wandering 
looking for Republicans. 

But fatigue brought order and the sale of volunteers be¬ 
gan. A Lasher boy of sixteen earned a fortune by going 
as a substitute. The war was already a war of boys on both 
sides. The hatred of Lincoln, however, was so keen that 
Westchester County gave two thousand majority to General 
McClellan in his campaign for the Presidency against Lincoln. 
That harried and harrowing politician barely carried the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 323 

state, and served only a month of his new term before he was 
shot dead. He looked very majestic in his coffin and those 
who had laughed at him wept with remorse. In his death 
he won to the lofty glory his good homeliness had earned, 
though it brought him contempt while he lived. But that 
apotheosis was as yet months away, and unsuspected. 

Toward the last of the war, RoBards had noted that Patty 
was forever holding one hand to her heart. He assumed that 
it was because a canker of terror was always gnawing 
there on account of Keith, always wandering somewhere 
through the shell-torn fields where bullets whistled, or the 
devils of disease spread their gins and springes. 

This pain was never absent, but there was another ache 
that she hardly dared confess to herself. She thought it 
petty selfishness to have a distress when so many thousands 
were lying with broken bodies and rended nerves in the 
countless hospitals. 

She put off troubling the doctors. Few of them were left 
in the city or the country and they were overworked with 
the torn soldiers invalided home. 

Finally the heartache grew into a palpable something, and 
now and then it was as if a zigzag of lightning shot from 
her breast to her back. And once when she was reading to 
her husband about the unending siege of Petersburg where 
the last famished, barefoot heroes of the South were being 
slowly brayed to dust, a little shriek broke from her. 

“What’s that?” cried RoBards. 

“Nothing! Nothing much!” she gasped, but when he 
knelt by her side she drooped across his shoulder, broken 
with the terrible power of sympathy, and sobbed: 

“Mist’ RoBards, I’m afraid!” 


CHAPTER XLVIII 


WlTHIN the silken walls of Patty’s body, still beautiful 
as a jar of rose leaves, a secret enemy was brooding, build¬ 
ing. A tulip tree, a tree of death was pushing its roots all 
through her flesh. 

There had been no pain at first and nothing to warn her 
that life was confusedly conspiring against itself. 

Then there were subtle distresses, strange shafts of an¬ 
guish like javelins thrown from ambush. Her suspicions 
were so terrifying that she had feared to see a doctor. 

But now RoBards compelled her to go with him to consult 
an eminent surgeon. She endured his professional scrutiny, 
his rude caresses. At last he spoke with a dreadful kindli¬ 
ness and did not rebuke her as of old for indiscretions or 
neglects. He told her that there was trouble within that 
needed attention as soon as she was a little stronger. She 
smiled wanly and went out to the waiting carriage. 

To RoBards who lingered for a last word, Dr. Marlowe 
whispered: “For Christ’s sake, don’t tell her. It’s cancer!” 

If death could have come to him from fright, RoBards 
would have died then. He toppled as if he had been smitten 
with the back of a broadsword. 

He turned eyes of childlike appeal to the dismal eyes of 
the physician, who was more helpless than his victims since 
he knew better than they how much woe is abroad. 

Dr. Marlowe laid a hand on RoBards’ shoulder as a man 
might say: “I will go to the guillotine with you. The only 
dignity left is bravery. Let us not forget our etiquette.” 

But to be brave for another’s doom! To be plucky about 
the fact that his wife, his sweetheart, the infanta of his love, 
was to be torn to pieces slowly by the black leopard of that 
death—this was a cowardly bravery to his thinking. He 

324 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


325 

was brave enough to confess his utter, abject terror. He 
went through what thousands had once felt when their be¬ 
loved were summoned to the torture chamber. 

He fought his panic down lest Patty be alarmed. He 
wrestled with the mouth muscles that wanted to scream 
protests and curses; and he made them smile when he went 
out and sank in the carriage beside her and told the driver 
“Home!” as one might say “To the Inquisition!” 

And Patty smiled at him and hummed: 

“We-e-e-eave no mo-o-ore silks, ye Ly-y-ons loo-oo-oo- 
ooms” 

She knew that the doctor was glozing over his fatal dis¬ 
covery. She knew that her husband’s smile was but the 
grimace of one poisoned with the sardonic weed. She was 
afraid, though, to reveal her intuition lest she lose control 
of her own terrors, leaping and baying like mad hounds at 
the leashes of her nerves. 

The only hope the coupled humans had of maintaining a 
decent composure was in keeping up the lie. They were 
calm as well-bred people are when a theatre catches fire and 
they disdain to join the shrieking, trampling herd. 

They had tickets for a play that night. It seemed best 
to go. The play was sad at times and Patty wept softly. 
RoBards’ hand hunted for hers and found it, and the two 
hands clung together, embracing like the Babes in the Wood 
with night and the wild beasts gathering about them. 

After a dreadful delay, there was a more dreadful opera¬ 
tion, and once more RoBards blessed the names of Morton, 
Jackson, and Wells for the sleep they gave his beloved 
during the nightmare of the knives. But only for a while, 
since the pain, after a brief frustration, flowed back like a 
dammed river when the dam gives way. 

When he demanded more of the drug, the physician pro¬ 
tested: “We must not be careless. It is a habit-forming 
drug, you know.” 

But pain was a habit-forming poison, too. The operation 
was too late to do more than prolong the day of execution. 

All over the world men were delving into the ancient 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


326 

mystery. But nobody knew. Nobody could find out a why 
or a wherefore. Some day somebody would surely stumble 
on the cause and then the cure would turn up. The answer 
would be simple perhaps. 

But it would be too late for Patty. 

What followed was unspeakable, too cruel to recount, be¬ 
yond the reach of sympathy. Minutes seemingly unbear¬ 
able heaped up into hours, hours into mornings, afternoons, 
slow evenings, eternal, lonely nights. Days and nights be¬ 
came weeks, months. 

The doctor, weary of the spectacle of Patty's woe, gave 
the drug recklessly. It had passed the point of mattering 
whether it were habit-forming or not. 

And then immunity began. As the disease itself was the 
ironic parody of life, so the precious gift of immunity be¬ 
came the hideous denial of relief. 

The solace in drugs lost all potency. The poor wretch 
was naked before the fiends. The hell the Bible pronounced 
upon the non-elect was brought up to earth before its time. 

Dr. Chirnside slept now with his fathers, but his successor 
called upon Patty to minister comfort. He was a stern 
reversion to the Puritan type that deified its own granite. 
When he was gone, Patty was in dismay indeed. For now 
the torture was perfected by a last exquisite subtlety, the 
only thing left to increase it: the feeling that it was de¬ 
served. Remorse was added to the weapons of this invisible 
Torquemada. 

From Patty’s blenched, writhen lips, between her gnashing 
teeth slipped the words: 

“Honey, it’s a punishment on me for my wickedness.” 

“No, no, no! What wickedness have you ever done?” 

“Oh, you know well enough. You cried hard enough once. 
And there have been so many cruel things I have done, so 
many mean evil thoughts, so many little goodnesses I put off. 
God is remembering those things against me.” 

“You make God more cruel than man. How could he be? 
It’s blasphemy to blame him for your misery.” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 327 

He thought, of course, of Harry Chalender. Harry 
Chalender!—Harry Chalender, who had never repented a 
crime, never reformed, never spared a home or a virtue or 
failed to abet a weakness. Yet he was hale and smirking 
still at life, an heroic rake still fluttering the young girls’ 
hearts, garnering the praises of men. If God were punish¬ 
ing sin, how could he pass Harry Chalender by, and let him 
live untouched? 

But Patty’s head swung back and^forth: 

“God can never forgive me, I suppose. But you do— 
don’t you, honey?—you forgive me?” 

“I have nothing to forgive you for. You have been my 
angel always. I adore you.” 

She clenched his hand with gratitude and then she wrung 
it as a throe wrung her. It was RoBards that cried, 
screamed: 

“Oh, I don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want it! I don’t 
want it! I can’t stand it!” 

He was in such frenzy of sympathy that she put out her 
pale, twitching hand and caressed his bowed head, and felt 
sorry for his sorrow. 

But night and day, day and night! 

She groaned: “The worst of it is, honey, that there’s no 
end of it till there’s an end of me. If I could only die soon! 
That’s the only remedy, dear heart. I pray for death, but 
it won’t come. I used to be so afraid of it, and now I love 
it—next to you.” 

Again and again the surgeons took her away, and brought 
her back lessened. Sometimes she pleaded with RoBards 
against a return to that table, clinging with her flaccid little 
fingers to his sleeve, imploring him not to let them hurt her, 
if he loved her. And his love of her made him drive her 
back. 

She sighed again and again in a kind of aloofness from 
herself: 

“Oh, my pretty body, my poor little, pretty, pretty body, 
how sorry I am for you!” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


328 

And once, as they carried her along the corridor she whis¬ 
pered to her husband: 

“I always wanted to be good, honey. And I tried to. I 
always wanted to be all that you wanted me to be; and you 
always wanted me to be everything that was—wonderful. 
But somehow I couldn’t be—wonderful. You forgive me, 
though, don’t you? I always loved you. Sometimes it 
must have seemed as if I cared more for somebody else. 
But that was just weakness—restlessness—something like 
a fever or a chill that I couldn’t help. But all the time I 
loved you. And you have loved me gloriously. That is all 
the pride my poor body and I have left—that we were loved 
by so good a man as you.” 

She suffered most perhaps because of the flight of her 
beauty before the ravages of her enemy. 

But underneath the mask of her pain, RoBards could 
always see the pretty thing she was when she was a bride 
asleep against his shoulder on the long drive up to Tuliptree 
Farm. And when at last they let her go back there to escape 
the noise of the city, he rode beside her again behind slow- 
trotting horses. But now they were in an ambulance lent 
them by one of the military hospitals. 

They were far longer than then in getting out of the city 
into the green, for the city had flowed outward and outward 
in a tide that never ebbed, never surrendered what fields 
it claimed. 

But as the last of the city drew back into the distance, she 
sighed wearily: 

“Good-by, New York. I always loved you. I’ll never 
see you again.” 

He remembered how she had bidden it farewell on that 
first flight from the cholera. She had married him in terror, 
but he was glad that she was not the wife of that Chalender 
who was still in the* battle front, winning more and more 
fame while Immy languished on the Pacific coast, and Patty 
here. RoBards owned Patty now. He had earned her love 
by a lifetime of devout fidelity. And she was won to him. 

As he looked down at the pallid face on the pillow it was 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 329 

still that winsome face in the scuttle hat, that pink rose in the 
basket, jostling against his shoulder while she slept. 

She sighed often now: “Em not nice any more. Fm 
terrible. Go away!” 

But the lavender of memory kept her sweet. 


CHAPTER XLIX 


XHE old house gathered her in and comforted her for a 
while. But chiefly it comforted her because it let her cry 
out without fear of notice from passersby in the street or 
the neighbors in St. John’s Park. 

And there she abode until the war was over, and the troops 
came home, saddened in their triumph by the final sacrifice 
of poor Mr. Lincoln. 

When the regiment whose colonel was Keith flowed up 
Broadway, Patty was not there to run out and kiss his hand, 
as she would have done if she could have seen him on his 
horse with his epaulets twinkling on his shoulders, and his 
sword clinking against his thigh. 

His father watched him from a window and then hurried 
up side streets to meet and embrace him when he was free 
of his soldiers. RoBards had to wait, of course, until Keith 
had hugged his wife and tossed aloft the child he saw now 
for the first time. Then the author of all this grandeur came 
meekly forward and felt small and old and foolish in the 
great arms of this famous officer. 

“Where’s mother!” Keith cried. 

“Up at the farm.” 

“Why couldn’t she have come down to meet me?” 

“She’s not very well of late.” 

Keith’s pique turned to alarm. He knew his mother and 
he knew that nothing light could have kept her from this 
hour. But Frances turned his thoughts aside with hasty 
chatter, and dragged him home. 

The next day he obtained leave from the formalities of 
the muster-out and was ready for a journey to Kensico. 
His father, who had to be in town for his business’ sake 
and to gain new strength for Patty’s needs, went with him. 

330 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


33i 


On the way up Keith said: 

“What’s all this mystery about mother?” 

“She’s pretty sick, my boy. You’ll find her changed a 
good deal. You’ll pretend not to notice, of course. She’s 
proud, you know.” 

Then the grisled colonel, who had grown patient with so 
much that was terrible, looked at his father as he had looked 
sometimes when he woke from bad dreams, screaming 
“Mamma! Papa!” 

He turned his frightened eyes away from what he saw in 
his father’s eyes. 

Quietly, since it was an old, old story to him, RoBards 
told him the truth, and Keith wrung his hands to keep from 
startling the passengers in the crowded car with the mad ges¬ 
tures of protest he would else have flung out. 

He wanted to charge the clouds and battle in his mother’s 
behalf. 

But when he entered her room he was as brave and calm 
as at a dress parade. He smiled and caressed and spoke 
flatteries that cut his throat and burned his lips. 

He hurried back to disband his regiment, then brought 
Frances and his son up to Tuliptree with him, and established 
himself in the nearest room to his mother’s. He tucked 
her in and babied her as she had babied him when she was 
younger than he was now. 

Patty’s famous hair was her only remaining pride, the 
inheritance from the Patty Jessamine who had combed and 
brushed and coiled it and wrapped it in strange designs about 
her little head. 

She was always fondling it as if it were a fairy turban, 
a scarf of strange silk. Even in her bitterest paroxysms she 
would not tear at her hair. 

The nurse would braid it and draw two long cables down 
her shoulders and praise it, and Patty would not brag a 
little, saying: 

“It is nice, isn’t it?” 

The fate that took away every other comfort and beauty 
and every last luxury spared her tresses. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


33 2 

They had not even turned white except for certain little 
streaks—a fine line of silver here and there that glistened 
like the threads of the dome-spider’s gossamer shining in 
the morning dew when the sunbeams just rake the lawn. 

She would lay her hair against her cheeks and against 
her lips and she would hold it up to RoBards to kiss, and 
laugh a wild little laugh. 

He loved it as she did, and thought it miraculous that so 
many strands of such weave should be spun from that head 
of hers to drip about her beauty. 

Then she would forget it in another call to martyrdom. 
Her bravery astounded her husband and her brave son. It 
was the courage of the ancient heretic women who had 
smiled amid the flames of the slow green fagots that zealots 
chose for their peculiar wretchedness. 

Sometimes she would seem to be whispering something 
to herself and RoBards would bend down to catch the words. 
Usually she was crooning that song: 


“We-e-e-eave no mo-o-ore silks, ye Ly-y-y-ons loo-oo- 

ooms. 


To deck our girls for ga-a-ay delights.” 


The war was over, the looms were astream with silks 
again, but not for Patty Jessamine RoBards. 

One night when he had fallen asleep from sheer fag, 
drained like an emptied reservoir, RoBards was wakened 
by her seizure upon his arm. It terrified him from some 
dream of a lawsuit. He was a moment or two in realizing 
that it was Patty who had seized him. The lamp had gone 
out, the dawn was stealing in. She was babbling: 

“I can’t stand it any more. Not another day! Oh, God, 
not another day! Don’t ask me that, dear God!” 

He tried to take her out of herself on to his own galled 
shoulders. He seized her hands and put his face in front 
of her glazed eyes and cried to her to talk to him and let 
him help her through this one more Gethsemane. 

Her desperate eyes stared past him for a while. Then 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


333 

their blurred gaze slowly focussed upon him. She nodded 
in recognition and talked to him, not to God: 

“I’d ask you to give me a knife or a pistol or something 
to kill myself with, but I’m afraid. Dr. Chirnside said 
once that self-murder was a sin, a cowardly sin, and that 
hell waited for the craven one. Hell would be even worse 
than this, I suppose, and it would never end—never. Isn’t 
it funny that God could build hell and keep it burning from 
eternity to eternity? Why if you were God, and there were 
only me in hell, you’d weep so many tears they would put 
out the fires, wouldn’t you? And you’d lift me up in your 
arms and comfort my poor scorched body. For you love 
me. But oh, if only somebody would love me enough to 
kill me. No, I don’t mean that. You would, if I asked 
you. You’d go to hell for me forever. I know you, Mist’ 
RoBards—Davie. You would, wouldn’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“I wouldn’t let you, though. No! If hell must be gone 
through I’d rather be the one. To be there in hell and think 
of you in heaven feeling sorry for me would help a little. 

“But if only some of these burglars that kill strange 
people would shoot me by accident! If only an earthquake 
should come or a fire should break out, so that I could be 
killed honestly! If only—if only—oh, I can’t stand another 
day, Davie! I just can’t. That’s all there is about it. I 
can’t.” 

Then she forgot her thoughts, her theology, her hopes 
in the utter absorption of her soul in her body’s torment. 
She was very busy with being crucified. 

RoBards suddenly realized that an opportunity was offered 
him to cure this unpitied sufferer. A choice that had long 
been before him was only now disclosed to his clouded soul. 
He wondered at his long delay in recognizing how simple a 
remedy there was for the disease called life. 

He did not know that his son Keith had risen from his 
bed, and stolen from his room to pace the hall outside his 
mother’s door. He did not know that Keith had been eaves¬ 
dropping upon this sacred communion of theirs. 


334 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


Keith was a soldier. He had been killing his fellow- 
Americans in great numbers for their own sakes and their 
country’s. He had been sending his own beloved men into 
traps of death and had acquired a godlike repose in the 
presence of multitudinous agonies. 

He, too, when he heard Patty’s appeal for release, won¬ 
dered why he had been so dull and so slow, so unmerciful 
through brutish stupidity. 

He had not hesitated in the field to cry “Charge!” and 
lead the long line like a breaker pursuing a fleet rider up 
a beach, a breaker crested with bright bayonets. This duty 
before him was not so easy to meet. Yet it seemed a more 
certain duty than his lately finished task of slaying Southern 
men. 

If he did not kill his mother, his father must. He could 
save them both by one brief gesture. Yet he shrank from 
it, fought within himself a war of loves and duties. Then 
he heard his mother’s wailing again and he set his teeth 
together fiercely, laid his hand upon the knob, turned it 
softly, and softly thrust the door ajar. 


CHAPTER L 


When he had been confronted with the opportunity to 
end the life of Immy’s baby and with it numberless perils, 
RoBards had hesitated until the chance was taken from 
him. 

But now he did not even question the high necessity for 
action. Whether he were insane from the laceration of his 
sympathies or superhumanly wise, his mind was made up 
the instant the idea came to him. 

As if some exterior power considered and ordained the 
deed, his mind was made up for him. He felt it his solemn 
duty to give Patty surcease of existence. He wondered 
only at his long delay in recognizing the compulsion. 

The patriarch Abraham in the Old Testament had heard 
a voice in the air bidding him despatch his only son for a 
burnt offering; he did not waver, but clave wood and piled 
it upon his son’s back and lured him to an altar and drew his 
knife against him. The curious god who could take pleasure 
in a child’s blood was amused at the last moment to send an 
angel to order the tortured old man to substitute a ram 
caught by his horns in the thicket. And the poor ram was 
burned instead. But Abraham had been ready to slash his 
boy’s young throat across at the divine whim and to watch 
him roast. 

There was a priestliness in RoBards’ soul, too; but he 
was not going to slay his wife to appease any cloudy deity. 
She was already a burnt offering alive and he was ordered 
to sacrifice her flesh to end its tyranny over her hopeless 
soul. 

He was puzzled only about the means. 

His brain ran along an array of weapons; knife, poison, 
pistol, throttling fingers. He read the list as if a hand held 

335 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


336 

a scrolled catalogue before his eyes. He discarded each as 
it came. It was too brutal. 

He stared at Patty, tossing there alone, and his heart 
sickened with love. Then he was more than ever afraid for 
her. For now she was in such an extreme of blind woe that 
she was snatching at her hair! 

She had lost her last interest in beauty. She was tearing 
at her hair, crisscrossing it over her face, biting and gnaw¬ 
ing at it, sawing it through her teeth. 

He ran to her to rescue that final grace. He took her 
hands from it and smoothed it back from her brow. It 
was soft beyond belief beneath his palm. It was deep and 
dense and voluptuously velvety. 

He knelt and, holding her hands tight, kissed her lips 
and her cheeks and kissed her eyelids, as if he were weight¬ 
ing them finally with pennies. And he groaned: “Good-by, 
honey!” 

Her eyelids opened under the kisses he had left upon them. 
She gasped: 

“Good-by? You’re not going to leave me? Don’t! ah, 
don’t!” 

He shook his head and groaned: 

“I’m not going to leave you, it’s you—it’s you that are— 
it’s you that are leaving me. And may God send somebody 
to meet and care for you on the long lonely road, oh, my 
beloved, my blessed, my baby, my beautiful!” 

She seemed to understand. Whether she thought with 
fear of the hell he was damning himself to, or dreaded after 
all to let go of life, the one thing certain, however evil, she 
shook her head in a panic of terror, and fluttered, 

“No, No! No!” 

He knew that his deed must be done swiftly. At once, 
or never. So he reached above her and took into his hands 
all the treasure of her hair where he had spread and 
smoothed it across her pillow. He drew it down like a heap 
of carded silk and swept it across her face, smothering her 
with it. 

She struggled and writhed, writhed to escape from under 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


337 

it. She seized his hands and tugged at them, dug her nails 
into them. 

Her breast beat up and down for breath; her heart must 
have plunged like a trapped bird. But he gathered the hair 
more and more thickly across her mouth. He bent down 
once and kissed her hot, panting lips. Her mouth was like 
a rose in a tangled skein of floss. Then he closed a double 
handful of her hair over her face and held it fast. 

It was cruel hard that after so long a life of devotion her 
last look at him should be one of horror; her farewell 
caresses given with her nails. But love asked this proof. 

His chief concern was whether his strength would abide 
the end. Her hands fought at his hands more and more 
feebly. It was easier to resist their battle than their sur¬ 
render. When her hands loosened, that was the hardest time. 
He imagined the prayers she was screaming dumbly at him 
and at God. But his love prevailed over his humanity, and 
he watched over her gaunt white bosom as the storm sub¬ 
sided from tempest to slumber, to sleep. 

He held her, drowned in her own hair, long after the ulti¬ 
mate pallor had snowed her flesh; long, long after her hands 
had fallen limp and wan, their empty palms upward like an 
unpitied beggar’s. 

When at last he was sure that she would never groan 
under another of this earth’s fardels, he lifted away her wan¬ 
ton tresses, as if he raised her veil. 

The first sight of her soul-less face broke him like a 
thunderbolt. 

Tears came gushing from him in shattered rain. He drew 
her hands prayer-wise across her bosom, and fell across her 
body, loving it, clutching at it. He could not cling, but he 
sank by the bed and spilled his limbs along the floor in a 
brief death. 

As if his soul had run after hers to make sure that it 
got home safe. 


CHAPTER LI 


ALL this while Keith had stood watching, as motionless 
as a statue, and with as little will. 

He had opened the door just as his father bent and 
kissed his mother through her hair. He had understood 
what was being done, and saw that his intervention was too 
late. He could not save his mother as he had planned. He 
had to watch her hands blindly fighting for escape, and to 
abstain from help. He could not rescue his father from 
that ineffable guilt, or rob him of his divine prerogative. 

He felt as if he had stumbled upon a parental nakedness 
and must be forever accursed; but he could move neither 
forward nor back, to prevent or retreat. 

The first thing that recalled his power to move was the 
touch of Aletta, the widow of David Junior. After hours 
on a rack of sympathy, she had fallen asleep at last with 
the covers stuffed over her ears to shut out the wails of her 
husband’s mother, whom she had learned to call “Mamma.’* 

The silence had startled her awake, the strange unusual 
peace, the deep comfort of the absence of outcry. She had 
leaped from the bed and hurried barefoot to the room. 

She encountered Keith rigid on the sill and, glancing 
past, saw RoBards on the floor. She thought he had fallen 
asleep from exhaustion. In the bed Patty lay blissful. 

Aletta whispered: 

“Poor Mamma! She’s sleeping, isn’t she?” 

Keith turned as if his neck were of marble and stared 
with a statue’s eyes. She ran past him and knelt by RoBards. 
He protected his eyes from the innocent trust in hers by 
drawing his eyelids over them. 

Then he hoisted himself to his feet. Life came back to 
his every member in a searing current. His mind turned 

338 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


339 

traitor to itself, and he felt that he was the most hideous 
criminal that ever soiled the earth. 

To make sure that he had not merely dreamed it all, he 
bent and touched the hand of Patty, set his finger where her 
pulse had once throbbed like a little heart, felt no stir there; 
kissed her lips and found them cold. 

He turned to Aletta and said: 

“Your mamma—your mamma—our darling is—is-” 

Aletta screamed and ran to the bed and verified the mes¬ 
sage, then dashed from the room aghast, crying for help. 
Soon the house was awake, trembling with feet. Lamps were 
lighted, children whimpered questions sleepily. 

Keith took his father’s hand and murmured before any¬ 
one else could come: 

“I saw what you did.” 

His father recoiled in horror, but Keith said: 

“I came too late to save you by doing it myself.” 

RoBards needed, above all things just then, someone to 
understand, to accept, to approve. He was like a man dying 
of thirst in a desert when he looks up and sees a friend 
standing by with water and food and strong arms. 

He fell into his son’s embrace and clenched him tight, 
and was clenched tight. There was no need for RoBards 
to ask his boy to keep this secret. The child was a father 
and a husband and he understood. They fell back and wrung 
hands, and RoBards winced as he saw that the backs of his 
hands were bleeding from the marks of Patty’s fingernails. 

Then the room filled with the hurried family drowsily 
regarding death: Keith’s wife with her child toddling, up¬ 
held by a clutch of her nightgown; Aletta and the tiny 
Jessamine, whom Patty had named; the old nurse whom 
RoBards had sent off to bed hours ago. 

Everybody was ashamed of the thought that it was best 
for Patty to be no more, for it was too hideous a thing 
to say of a soul. It was a villainous thought even to think 
that Patty was better dead. 

When the venerable Doctor Matson was fetched at last, 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


340 

RoBards was glad to have Aletta tell him how she came in 
and what she saw: 

The Doctor looked unconvinced, puzzled, then convinced. 
RoBards feared that Matson would look at him with dismay. 
In the morning, before a stranger, his passionate deed did 
not look so tender, so devoted as in the night. But the 
Doctor avoided any challenge of RoBards’ gaze and con¬ 
tented himself with saying: 

“She was a beautiful little lady.” 

And that made RoBards remember how Patty had looked 
when she read in the paper the terrible word, “was”—a 
terrible word for beauty, youth, joy, but a beautiful one for 
pain, weeping, and being afraid. 

Though new churches were being established in Kensico, 
with their ex-members asleep about them, RoBards wanted 
Patty near him and the children in the little yard where the 
tulip trees had grown high. 

The funeral was held in the house, and there was a 
throng. The road was choked with carriages. It was 
Patty’s last party. 

Even Mrs. Lasher hobbled over in a new black dress. Her 
daughter Aletta had seen to her comfort; and the pride she 
took in being related to the RoBardses was so great that her 
tears were almost boastful. 

Since the famous son-in-law, Harry Chalender, Major- 
General of Volunteers, was still in the East, of course he 
was present at the obsequies. RoBards watched him with 
the eyes of a crippled wolf seeing his rival stalwart. The 
insolent dared even to ask if he might stay the night at the 
house, and RoBards could not turn him out. 

But the thought of Chalender added gall to his grief. He 
was standing by his window late that night, looking out at 
the tulip trees under whose enlarging branches his family 
was slowly assembling, when there came a knock at the 
door. He turned. It was Chalender—coming right in. He 
wore that wheedling look of his as he said: 

“I can’t sleep either, Davie. By God, I am afraid to be 
alone. Do you mind if I sit with you awhile?” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 341 

He did not wait for permission, but sank down on the 
old couch. It creaked and almost gave way under him. 

‘‘Don’t sit there!” RoBards shouted, as if he feared an 
accident, but really because he could not endure the memory 
of the time he had seen Chalender there with Patty kneeling 
by him. It leaped back at him, rejuvenating his forgotten 
wrath. Again he wanted to hurl himself at Chalender’s 
throat. And again he did not. 

Chalender, perhaps remembering too, shivered, rose, and 
went to the fireplace, thrusting his hands out, and washing 
them in the warm air as he mumbled: 

“Many’s the cold night I’ve stood by the camp fire and 
tried to get my hands warm. That’s the only sign of my 
age, Davie: it’s hard to keep my hands warm. They’re half 
frozen all the time.” 

He did not note that RoBards made no comment. He 
was thinking of that circle in Dante’s Inferno where the 
damned lie imbedded in ice. But Chalender glanced down 
at the hearthstone and asked: 

“Isn’t that the marble I brought over from Sing Sing 
when I was an engineer on the aqueduct? Why, I believe 
it is! There was a poem I started to write. I have always 
been a poet at heart, Davie, plucking the lyre with hands 
all thumbs, trying to make life rhyme and run to meter. 
But I had no gift of words. 

“I spent half a night and fifteen miles trying to write a 
poem to go with that slab. It ran something like—like—ah, 
I have it!— 

“Marble, marble, I could never mould you 
To the beauteous image of my love, 

So keep the blissful secret that I told you 
Tell it only to- 

“And there I stuck and couldn’t get on to save me.” 

He bent his arm along the mantel and laid his forehead 
on it as he said with an unusual absence of flippancy: 

“I loved her, Davie. You stole her from me when I was 
dying. You ran away with her to this place. When I called 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


342 

for her and they told me she had married you, my heart 
died. I got well. My body got well. But my soul was 
always sick. I laughed and pretended, flirted and reveled, 
but I never loved anybody else—only Patty—always only 
Patty. 

“And she—when she was afraid of life or death, she ran 
to you; but when she wasn’t afraid of life-” 

As he struck his chest and opened his mouth to proceed, 
RoBards yelled: 

“You say it and I’ll kill you!” 

“You—kill anybody?” Chalender sneered, and RoBards 
sneered again: 

“Oh, I’ve killed one or two in my day.” 

Chalender apparently did not hear this mad brag, for he 
was bragging on his own account: 

“You couldn’t kill me; nor could ten men like you. 
Thousands have tried to kill me. For four years the Rebels 
kept shooting at me and whacking at me with their sabers, 
jabbing with their bayonets and searching for me with 
grape and canister, but I didn’t die. It seems I shall never 
die. Maybe that’s because I’ve never quite lived. I loved 
Patty and you got her. You oughtn’t to be hurt to learn 
that another man loved your love. But if it makes you mad 
to hear me say it, maybe you could kill me. Then my blood 
would run out on this marble that I brought to her when 
she was young and pretty. Oh, but she was pretty, a pretty 
thing, a sweet thing. What a damned, ugly world, to let a 
pretty thing like Patty Jessamine suffer and die! 

“Oh, Davie, Davie, what a darling she was, in what a 
dirty world!” 

He put out his hand hungrily in the air and something— 
as if it were Patty’s ghost smiling irresistibly—persuaded 
RoBards’ hand forward to take Chalender’s and wring it 
with sympathy. 

So two souls, two enemies on earth, meeting in hell, might 
gaze into each other’s eyes and find such agony there that 
they would lock hands in mutual pity. 

RoBards and Chalender looked straight at one another 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 343 

for the first time perhaps; and each wondered at the other’s 
sorrow. 

By and by Chalender sighed and murmured: 

“Thank you, David. I think I shall sleep now. Good 
night, old man; and God help us all.” 


CHAPTER LII 


FLEEING from the Oppressiveness of the farm, RoBards 
returned to St. John’s Park to find it alive with memories 
of Patty. He loved to recall their quarrels, her vanities, 
her extravagances, her fierce unreasonable tempers, the im¬ 
pudent advantages she took of his love, her hostility to all 
laws and orders, the flitting graces she revealed. He loved 
her for them, more than for her earnest moods, her noble 
whims, her instants of grandeur. A swallow for its wild¬ 
ness, a humming bird for its teasing, a kitten for its scamp¬ 
ers—a woman for her unlikeness to a man’s ideals—we love 
them for what they will not give us! 

Only a little while could RoBards revel in his lavendered 
memories, for St. John’s Park was taken over by a railroad 
company as the site for a big freight station. All of the 
inhabitants were evicted like paupers from a tenement. The 
quondam retreat of gentility in search of peace was now a 
bedlam of noisy commerce, of thudding cars and squeaking 
brakes. 

RoBards wanted to seal the house like a sacred casket of 
remembrances, but it was torn down in spite of him and the 
place of it knew it no more. 

The city seemed to pursue RoBards. The people swarmed 
after him and never retreated. Keith took a house in town, 
and asked his father to live with him, but RoBards, think¬ 
ing of what a burden old Jessamine had been in his own 
home, would not risk a repetition of that offense. 

Again he lived at a hotel and at his office. Having nothing 
else to fill his heart, he gave all his soul to the law and be¬ 
came a mighty pleader in the courts. As the city grew, 
great businesses developed and ponderous litigations in¬ 
creased, involving enormous sums. His fees were in pro- 

344 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


345 

portion and, finding that his value seemed to be measured 
by the size of his charges, he flattered his clients by his 
exorbitance. 

For his own satisfaction he took up now and then the 
defense of a criminal, a murderer, a murderess, anybody who 
had passionately smashed the laws of God and man. And 
it fascinated him to rescue the culprit from penalty of any 
sort; to play upon the public and its twelve senators in the 
jury box until they all forgave the offense and made a 
martyr of the offender, applauded the verdict of “Not 
Guilty.” 

After all, RoBards thought, justifying his seeming an¬ 
archy : who is truly guilty of anything ? Who would shoot 
or poison another except under the maddening torment of 
some spiritual plague ? 

And if one must say, as the pious pleaded, that Heaven 
was all-wise and all-merciful and all-loving even though it 
sent cancer and cholera and mania and jealousy to prey 
upon helpless humans, why should one abhor a human being 
who followed that high example and destroyed with ruth¬ 
lessness ? 

In this ironic bitterness, RoBards saved from further 
punishment many a scandalous rebel and felt that he was 
wreaking a little revenge on the hateful world for its cruelty 
to Patty, saving other wretches from the long, slow tortures 
she endured. 

But nothing mattered much. His riches annoyed him, 
since they came too late to make Patty happy with luxuries. 
It was another sarcasm of the world. 

It amused him dismally to furnish old Mrs. Lasher with 
money to spend; with a coat of paint and new shingles for 
her house, and credit at A. T. Stewart’s big store. This 
gave her a parting glimpse of the life she had missed; and 
when she died, he provided her with a funeral that put a 
final smile on her old face. 

This was not in penance for what he had done to her 
son. That was only a dim episode now, with condemnation, 
forgiveness, and atonement all outlawed beyond the statu- 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


346 

tory limitations. Time does our atoning for us by smooth¬ 
ing sins and virtues to one common level. 

Aletta was a more profitable investment for money. He 
made her so handsome that she attracted suitors. And one 
day she tearfully confessed that she was in love with a man 
who besought her in marriage. This meant that Mrs. David 
RoBards, Junior, would cease to keep that sacred name alive, 
and when Junior’s daughter should grow up she would also 
shed the family name. 

But nothing mattered much—except that people should 
get what they wanted as fully and as often as possible. He 
made over to Aletta a large sum of money, on the condition 
that she should keep its source a secret. 

The habit of secrecy concerning deeds of evil grew to a 
habit of secrecy concerning deeds of kindliness. He tended 
more and more to keep everything close, the least important 
things as well as the most. 

He could not be generous often to his son Keith; Keith 
was too proud of his own success to take tips. He had 
chosen wisely when he made a career of hydraulic engineer¬ 
ing, for water seemed to be the one thing that New York 
could never buy enough of. 

The reservoir in Central Park, Lake Manahatta, had been 
opened in the second year of the war and though it held a 
thousand and thirty million gallons, it sufficed but briefly. 
Sometimes, riding a horse in the new pleasance, RoBards 
would make the circuit of that little artificial sea and, paus¬ 
ing to stare down into its glass, try to recall that once it had 
been a ravine where squatters kept their squalid homes. 

The insatiable city was drowning land everywhere with 
dammed-up water, but the undammed people were flowing 
outward like water. In 1869 there was a drought and the 
four great reservoirs were all empty. No water came in at 
all save from the Croton River. A new reservoir was 
established at High Bridge to take care of the colony increas¬ 
ing in Washington Heights. A reservoir was made at Boyd’s 
Corner to hold nearly three hundred million gallons. 

The next year the city laid its great hands upon a part 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 347 

of Westchester County, and not content to reach out for 
water annexed the land as well. 

Recalling when it had seemed a ridiculous boast that New 
York would one day reach the Harlem River, RoBards 
already saw its boundary pushed north to Yonkers and 
eastward along the banks of his Bronx. 

He felt as if the city were some huge beast clumsily ad¬ 
vancing toward his home. 

Its thirst was its excuse, and when the next shortage of 
water forced the town to make a house-to-house inspection 
of plumbing to cut down the waste, the engineers went out 
to hunt new ponds, while its ambassadors marched on Albany 
and forced the state to cede it three more lakes in the Croton 
watershed. 

The property owners on their shores filled up the outlets 
and fought the octopus in vain; and RoBards once more 
distinguished himself for his brilliant rear-guard actions, 
ending always with defeat in the courts. 

At Middle Branch on the Croton, a reservoir of four 
thousand million gallons failed to satisfy the town, and in 
1880 began the two driest years ever heard of. All the 
reservoirs were drained and even the Croton wearied. The 
thirty million gallons a day it poured into the city’s dusty 
gullet fell to ten million. The public fountains were sealed, 
the hydrants turned off, the Mayor urged the citizens to 
thrift, thrift, thrift. 

Isaac Newton, the Chief Engineer, proposed a second 
aqueduct to drain the Croton region, a great dam below the 
old, a tunnel, the longest in the world, to the city and a 
great inverted siphon under the Harlem’s oozy bed. And 
this was decreed; and in time accomplished under Engineer 
Fteley. 

But the promise of these two hundred and fifty million 
gallons a day was not enough; and now the city turned its 
eyes to the Bronx River, and RoBards felt that his doom 
was announced. The sacred stream had kept its liberty in 
the face of greedy projects since it was first named in 1798 
as a victim of the all-swallowing town. 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


348 

In place of the sixty thousand population then, there were 
twelve hundred thousand people now, and buildings were 
lifted so high that people were living six stories in air. They 
expected the city to pump water to their faucets. It did, 
while the supply held. 

Up the railroad came an army of engineers with Keith 
high among them to stretch a dam at the very edge of Ken- 
sico, trapping the Bronx and its cousin the Byram stream. 
With the engineers came the laborers, a horde of Italians 
and all the muck and vermin that had marked the building 
of the Croton dam. 

The Kensico dam would impound only sixteen hundred 
and twenty million gallons and there were sixteen hundred 
thousand people in New York by the time it was finished. 
The two Rye ponds dammed and a Byram reservoir com¬ 
pleted and the Gun Hill reservoir at Williamsbridge raised 
the total to three and a half billion gallons, but RoBards 
saw that nothing could check the inevitable command to 
build a higher parapet at Kensico and spread a tributary 
lake across his farm and his tulip trees, his home, and his 
graves. 

Meanwhile, as the townspeople inundated the country all 
about, the greater tides of the republic overflowed all the 
continent. When Immy had married Chalender, she had had 
to sail around the peak of South America to San Francisco. 
But now the lands between were filled with cities, and the 
farmers were pushing out to retrieve the deserts from 
sterility. 

Railroads were shuttling from ocean to ocean and it took 
hardly more days now than months then for letters and 
people to go and come. 

Letters from Immy had not been many nor expressed 
much joy in the romance of the Pacific colonists. The re¬ 
turn of Chalender to San Francisco seemed rather to cause 
a recrudescence of unhappiness. 

After Patty’s death a letter came, addressed to her, that 
RoBards opened as her earthly proxy and read with tangled 
feelings: 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 349 

‘‘My husband is what he always was, a flirt incorrigible, a 
rake for all his loss of teeth. He still kisses the old ladies* 
hands and gives them a charitable thrill. And he kisses all the 
young girls’ lips that he can reach. 

“But I can’t complain. I was shopworn when he took me 
from the shelf. I am so domestic that I can hardly believe my 
own eventless diary. I am plain and plump and my husband, 
such as he is, brings home so many stories that I don’t miss 
the novels much. 

“The neighbors run in with scandals, but I can usually say 
that Harry told me first. He is a beast but a lot of fun. For 
the children’s sake, I endure. I grow very homesick, though, 
and cry myself to sleep after my children have cried themselves 
to sleep. But oh, to have you tuck me in again, my pretty, my 
darling Mamma, and oh, to look into Papa’s sad, sweet eyes, 
and the unwavering love that seemed to grow the greater as I 
deserved it less and less!” 

Finishing the letter RoBards was glad, for some reason, 
that Patty had never seen it. She might have hated Chalen- 
der for being so fickle, but RoBards had heard him cry out 
in his loneliness and he could never hate him any more. 

He could not have sent him to hell or kept him there if 
he had been God, even the jealous God of Genesis. Yet if 
Chalender were not to go to hell, who could be sent? 

So feeble grew RoBards’ grudge that when he received 
a telegram all the way from San Francisco that Harry 
Chalender had died, he felt lonely; and tears ran down into 
his tremulous mouth. As always, Chalender had been en¬ 
gaged on a work of public benefaction. He had thrown him¬ 
self, heart and soul, into the irrigation projects that were 
rescuing the Golden State into a paradise of vines and fig- 
trees, almonds and oranges and palms. Overwork and over¬ 
exertion in the mountains broke his old heart. It was 
quaintly appropriate that his ever-driven heart should crack. 

Like so many of the republic’s heroes, his public morals 
were as pure as his private were sullied, and his funeral 
brought forth eulogium all across the continent. The pub¬ 
lic said, “He was a patriot!” and none knew how many 
women keened, “Harry was a darling, a darling, a darling.” 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


350 

The departure of Chalender took a prop from RoBards. 
He had outlived the rival who had saved his life and em¬ 
bittered it, and had confessed that RoBards had done him 
greater injury. 

He, RoBards, was ready now to go, and merely waited. 
The only thing he wished to see was Immy. She wrote that 
she would come to live with him as soon as she could close 
up her husband’s mixed affairs and learn whether she were 
rich or poor. 

As an earnest of her coming she sent along a daughter, 
to go to an Eastern finishing school. She had been named 
Patty, and the girl had grown to such likeness that when 
she stood at last before RoBards he almost fell to his knees 
to welcome a revenant ghost to his arms. 

She stood mischievous, exquisite, ambrosially winsome, 
ready to laugh or cry, threaten or take flight, according to 
whichever stratagem she could best use to gain her whim. 

She ran into her grandfather’s bosom and set his old heart 
to clamoring like a firebell in the night. Her lips tasted like 
Patty’s lips. Her flesh beneath his caress had the same 
peachy mellowness. 

So there was a new Patty in the world! The world would 
never lack for Patty Jessamines. 

Nor for David RoBardses, either, it seemed; for every 
body said that Keith’s son, Ward, was just like his grand¬ 
father. But only in looks, for Ward was already an engineer 
in his father’s office and even more zealous to build inland 
seas upon other people’s lands for the sake of the infinite 
New York he loved. 

Ward fought his grandfather, called him an old fogy, a 
poor Canute who wanted to check the world’s greatest city; 
and in his very ardor resembled RoBards more than either 
realized. 

He resembled him, too, in his response to the fascination 
of this new Patty. They were cousins, and in RoBards’ 
youth that had implied a love-affair. But nowadays such 
alliances were looked upon as perilous and scandalous. 

So Ward gave Patty merely the glance of admiration a 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


35i 


temperate man casts upon a jeweler’s window and resumed 
his efforts to convert his grandfather to the justice of making 
Westchester a mere cistern for New York. 

The young man knew nothing of the meaning of the land 
to RoBards; he knew nothing of the secrets the house re¬ 
tained like a strong vault. He had the imperial eye of youth, 
a hawk’s look to far horizons. 

He found old David querulous and old David found him 
sacrilegious; so they fought a civil war as uncivilly over the 
enslaving of the Westchester waters as North and South 
over the enslaving of the black nations stolen out of Africa. 

Keith began to incline to his father’s side, for he shared 
with him the love of the natal soil. Then Ward turned on 
Keith with equal impatience, denouncing him as. a “back 
number.” 

This brought about another alliance between Keith and 
his father, and they solemnly pledged themselves to save 
Tuliptree from New York. 


CHAPTER LIII 


WHEN the new lake of Kensico was linked to the 
Williamsbridge reservoir, Keith and Ward visited the farm. 

They spoke of tremendous future projects; for the prob¬ 
lem of fetching New York water was one that promised no 
respite. 

They went back to the city, leaving RoBards there to 
install a new “superintendent,” the fifth since Albeson had 
trudged into his grave after his fat old wife. 

Then the autumnal gales began to squander the golden 
leaves of Westchester,—the spendthrift heirs that strip all 
estates and bring back poverty in its everlasting rhythm. 

One night a wind came down in a tidal wave of air, a wind 
made up of an army of winds. 

RoBards stood out on his porch to watch the battle of his 
trees, each engaged with some fierce unseen wrestler that 
tore off every rag of leaf and twisted every limb, but could 
not win a fall. He laughed with pride to see his tulip trees 
defending his graves. They neither yielded nor fled; and 
they did not die. 

The air resounded like a pounded drum with the blasts of 
wind. The yard was a cauldron of boiling leaves and a 
smoke of dust. Mrs. Laight, the new farmer’s wife, begged 
the old gentleman to come inside the house, but he motioned 
her away, and she watched him through a window; saw him 
chuckle and wave his hands to his brave trees. 

He trusted even to the old giant whose roots he had 
sawed off when they pushed into the cellar walls. But he 
had trusted too long. 

A vast breaker of air rode over the Tarn of Mystery and 
splashed its pool with a dozen toppled veterans, oaks, syca¬ 
mores, and cedars; then the whole weight of its rush rolled 

352 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 353 

down the hill upon the house and, plucking off shingles like 
leaves, wrenching shutters loose and scattering a chimney 
into flying bricks, fell upon the ancient tulip tree on its outer 
side and brought it down like a fallen lighthouse. 

It smashed the roof it had shaded so many years and 
sliced off the graceful old cornices. 

Mrs. Laight screamed with terror, then with horror; for 
she saw RoBards go to his knees under a deluge of splintered 
timbers. Then the bole of the tulip tree rolled down upon 
him as the temple column on Samson; and he was lost to the 
sight of her affrighted eyes. 


CHAPTER LIV 


WHILE the young farmer and the two hired men labored 
in the rain that came as a deluge upon the gale’s heels, Mrs. 
Laight saddled and bridled a horse and forced it through the 
world of storm and across the barriers of blown-down trees 
into Kensico Village for Doctor Brockholst. 

By the time he arrived the broken body of RoBards was 
stretched upon the couch in the library. The master’s bed¬ 
room had been cracked open by the fallen tulip tree and the 
rain was thundering through it. 

The doctor, seeing the state of his patient and all his red 
wounds and hearing the groans he could not stifle, first 
checked the outlets of his blood, then made ready to give him 
ease of pain. 

Old RoBards was as eager for the anaesthetic as a starved 
infant for its mother’s milk, but he suddenly bethought him 
of his need of all his wits, and he gasped: 

“If—if you make me sleep, I may—may nev-never wake 
up, eh?” 

Doctor Brockholst tried to evade a direct answer, but Ro¬ 
Bards panted: 

“I won’t risk it—risk it. I’ve sent—I’ve sent Laight to 
tele-telegraph my son to come up from—from town. There’s 
things I must say to him—'before—before ” 

He was more afraid of unconsciousness than of pain, and 
he would not gamble with a palliation of his anguishes. He 
chattered to the doctor: 

“Just stay here and let me talk. It helps to keep me from 
making an old fool of myself. And don’t let me die till 
Keith comes. Don’t let me die till—oh, oh!—Oh, God! 
oh, God!” 

He gnawed his lips and twisted his face in all the fierce 
354 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 355 

grimaces of a desperate athlete trying to pry himself from 
a hammerlock. 

He groaningly computed the hours it would take Keith 
to reach the farm if he got the message and came at once 
and caught a train. But those hours passed and Keith was 
not yet visible to Mrs. Laight watching from the porch in 
her wind-whipped skirts and her fluttering shawl. 

The old man moaned, watching the inexorably deliberate 
clock with white eyes; 

“The storm has torn down the telegraph poles, I suppose; 
or wrecked a bridge or two. But somehow, somebody will 
get the word to my boy and he’ll fight his way here. I know v 
Keith!” 

The doctor pleaded with him to accept the aid of a sedative 
and even made a show of force, but the old man grew so 
frantic with resistance that he gave over. 

And after a time when Mrs. Laight had given up watching 
for Keith, there came upon his agonized mien a look almost 
of comfort. He smiled and murmured: 

“Now I know a little of what Patty suffered. I thought 
I knew before; but nobody can imagine pain—or remember 
it. It’s a hideous thing—to hurt. But I ought to be able to 
stand it for a night when that little girl bore far worse— 
far worse for years.” 

All the long evening, all the long night he babbled her 
name, and if at intervals he sobbed and the tears slid down 
his much-channeled features, it was for memory of the bit¬ 
terness of her woe, and his belated understanding of it. 

He would not take any quieting drug or let the needle be 
set against his skin, but he called for stimulants to lash his 
crippled heart to its task, putting the doctor on his honor not 
to cheat him. 

The physician fell asleep at midnight and woke shuddering 
in the chill of dawn, ashamed to think that every moment of 
his hours of oblivion had been a torment to his client. 

Soon after the dawn, Keith came, whipping a horse through 
the road, soggy with the nightlong rain. He ran across the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


356 

ruined porch into the wreck of the house and his father an¬ 
swered his searching call with a note of triumph: 

“That’s my boy! I knew he’d come! I knew!” 

Doctor Brockholst, who had never seen Keith, somehow 
expected a youth to dash into the room. He was surprised 
to find that the lad was a grizzled giant of fifty. But Colonel 
RoBards ran to the couchside and dropped to his knees, 
with a childish, “Daddy!” 

The shock of the contact brought a shriek from the old 
man’s jolted bones but he wrung a laugh from it. Then he 
asked the doctor to leave him alone with his son. 

Making sure that they were not spied upon, he whispered 
in a pellmell of hurry: 

“I had to see you, Keithie, to get one more promise from 
you before I go. The city, that infernal New York, will be 
demanding our farm for the bottom of one of its lakes 
before long. But don’t let ’em have it! Fight ’em to the 
last ditch! And whatever you do, don’t let ’em open the 
cellar walls. 

“There may be nothing there to see by now, but you re¬ 
member about Jud Lasher. He’s there still and after all 
these years I can’t bear the thought of anybody finding out 
what we kept inviolate so long, especially after I’m gone 
and can’t fight back. 

“Promise me you won’t let ’em tear down the house and 
the walls. I’ve seen ’em clear away so many old homes 
and stone fences and roads—for other lakes. I can’t abide the 
thought of them prying into our walls. 

“And I want to lie by your mother’s side out there in the 
yard. You’ll put me there. And once I’m there, they’ll 
never dare disturb me! You can put up a sign like 

Shakespeare’s: ‘Good friend, for Jesit’s j sake, forbear-’ 

or something like that. Promise.” 

“I promise!” said Keith. 

And his father, failing away beneath his eyes like Ham¬ 
let’s father’s spirit, spoke already from underground. 

“Swear!” 

“I swear!” 



WITHIN THESE WALLS 


357 


“Swear!” 

“I swear it, father!” 

There was a faint moan, almost of luxury, the luxury of 
one who sinks out of all pain and all anxiety into that per¬ 
fect sleep which Socrates pronounced the richest pleasure 
even of the Persian kings. 

Keith thought he saw his father smile; thought he read 
upon his lips the playful pet name he had seen and heard 
there, when as a child he saw his father praising his mother 
tenderly: 

“Patty? Pattikins? pretty, pretty Pattikins?” 

Then the lips ceased to beat together, and parted in the 
final yawn that ends the boredom of this life. 


CHAPTER LV 


There was something incomplete and irreparable for 
Immy in the fact that she reached New York too late to see 
her father before he joined her mother in oblivion. 

The new New York was beyond her comprehension. She 
was appalled by the aged look of all her old friends whom 
she remembered as young friends. She and her mirror had 
kept such steady company that she could not see the slow 
changes in her own features. She saw them all at once in 
the looking-glass of her old companions. 

They made her unhappy and she went up to Tuliptree 
Farm to live, saying that it was more wholesome for her chil¬ 
dren. Keith’s wife died and his children grew away from 
him and he felt tired, old, of an evening mood. So he also 
settled down at Tuliptree Farm, taking care that the restora¬ 
tions after the storm should renew the old lines of the house 
without disturbing its cellar walls. 

He had had a large part in the engineering of the large 
six-mile siphon that ran four hundred and twenty feet under 
the oozy bed of the Harlem. He watched the water from 
the new Croton aqueduct roll into Lake Manahatta in Cen¬ 
tral Park, and felt that the Croton field was now drained. 

All eyes turned further north, but the remaining cis-Hud- 
sonian streams belonged to the State of Connecticut whose 
sovereign rights were not at the mercy of Albany. 

The Catskill Mountains were the nearest source in the 
trans-Hudsonian territory, and the Ramapo Company bought 
up all the rights. A tempest of scandal broke out and Gov¬ 
ernor Roosevelt and Mayors Low and McClellan quashed 
the company and set on foot the project of the Ashokan 
reservoir, rivaling the magnitude of the canal cut through the 
Isthmus of Panama. 


358 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


359 

A strip of land two hundred feet wide and ninety-two 
miles long must be secured by condemnation and purchase, 
from Esopus Creek to New York across thousands of farms, 
and a siphon must be driven a thousand feet under the 
Hudson River between Storm King and Breakneck. 

The work involved the submersion or removal of sixty- 
four miles of highways, and eleven miles of railroad, nine 
villages and thirty-two cemeteries of nearly three thousand 
graves, some of them more than two centuries old. 

And Tuliptree Farm with its graves was only one of this 
multitude. Keith and Immy fought the city in vain. Noth¬ 
ing they could do could halt the invading army of fifteen 
hundred workmen that established itself at Valhalla and be¬ 
gan to dam the Bronx above White Plains. 

The dam was of cyclopean concrete, eighteen hundred feet 
across, and it was made to hold thirty-eight billion gallons 
of water. Which was only a fifty-day supply for New York. 

The new lake with its forty miles of shore line would 
obliterate no villages and few burial places. But one of 
these few was the RoBards’ plot and Keith trembled to 
think that when the house came down and the cellar walls 
were removed piecemeal, the bones of Jud Lasher would be 
disclosed. 

He dared not speak even to Immy of the secret in the 
walls. He could only stand aside and mourn the felling of 
the great tree-steeples. 

He and Immy watched the wrecking crew demolishing the 
house, throwing the chimneys down, tearing off the roof and 
opening the attic to the sun. Then the ceiling went and the 
floors of the bedrooms where their bare feet had toddled. 

At last the house was gone, all but the main floor, and 
from that stairways went up to nowhere. 

After the wrecking crew had left off work for the day, 
Keith and Immy wandered one evening through the place 
where the house once was, and poked about the debris on 
the library floor. They noted the hearthstone of white 
marble. 

They had seen to the removal of the graves before the 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


360 

tulip trees came down. The family had been transported to 
the increasing city of the dead at Kensico, but they were 
still debating what monument to rear. One little coffin was 
found there which Keith could not account for. 

That was Immy’s secret and she kept it, though it ached in 
her old heart, remembering the wild romance of her youth. 
A blush slipped through her wrinkles and the shame was 
almost pleasant at this distance. 

Now that she and Keith stared at the white marble hearth¬ 
stone, they were both inspired by a single thought. 

“Let’s use that for a headstone in the family lot in Ken¬ 
sico !” Immy said and Keith agreed. 

They were proud of the felicity of their inspiration and 
hiring laborers, stole the slab that very night and carried it 
over to the graveyard, and saw to its establishing. 

And they never knew the final irony of its presence there 
above the parallel bodies of David and Patty Ro'Bards. It 
linked Harry Chalender’s destiny forever with theirs. But 
they never made a protest. It was the Parthian shot of fate, 
the perfection of the contemptible contemptuousness with 
which life regards its victims. 

Unwitting of this dismal joke upon his father and remem¬ 
bering only the secret of which he was trustee, Keith loitered 
about to see the cellar walls demolished and the dead Jud 
Lasher brought to light. He kept wondering what to say 
when the crisis was reached. He could not find a lie to utter. 

But from somewhere the edict came that the cellar walls 
should not be taken away; and the workmen abandoned them. 

And now the house was gone as if it had been burned in 
some night of fire. But it had served its time. It had lived 
the short life of wooden homes. Stone houses may outlast 
sonnets and coins and chronicles, but houses of wood and 
of flesh perish soon. They have lived as stone never lived. 
Through the wood the white blood of sap once coursed and 
trees, like hearts, suffer too well for time to endure. They 
must go back to the dust whence new trees and new hearts 
are made. 

It was time for the old house to vanish. Like a human 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


361 

heart it had held within its walls sorrow and honor, passion 
and crime. It was time for it to cease to beat, cease to be. 

It went out with an honorable name. It went into oblivion 
with tio history, and the old word of Tacitus about nations 
was true of houses, too. Happy is the house that has no 
history. But all houses, and all nations, have histories—if 
one only knew. 

Keith was almost sorry that the cellar walls were left. 
He had braced himself against the shock of revelation and 
when it did not come, he suffered a collapse of strength. But 
he could not share this disappointment with anyone. It must 
remain forever a RoBards secret to die with him. 

When at last the dam was piled across the valley, and the 
little brooks encountered it, they backed up and filled their 
own beds to overflowing. They swelled till they covered the 
levels where the bridges had been. Stealthily they erased 
the roads that dipped into them now and ran under water 
till they climbed out again on the opposite slope. The brooks 
united into a pond and the pond widened and lengthened. 
It began to climb the hills and wind about the promontories. 

It aspired toward the highway cut out of the rock along 
the top of the hills, and toward the lengthy tall-piered con¬ 
crete bridge with the ornaments of green bronze. 

Keith and Immy watched the gradual drowning of the 
farm and took their last walks about it, hand in hand, until 
long arms of water cut off their approach even to the Tarn 
of Mystery, which was now a bald hillock, an island height, 
a tiny Ararat. 

Up and up the water climbed and came at last to the 
cellar walls, lipping them inquiringly. They had the isolated 
dignity of ruins on the Nile. They stood up in a little sea 
of waters and if anyone were to rip the strongbox of their 
secret open now, he must take a boat to reach it. 

One evening Keith and Immy went out to bid the home a 
last good-by. They rode along the highway in a motor car 
and left it with its driver while they clambered down to sit 
upon the hillside and pay the final rites of observation. 

Over their heads the automobiles went by in a stream, 


362 WITHIN THESE WALLS 

flashing back the sunset that turned the sheet of waters into 
blood. 

As the sunset grew wan and colorless, the motor lamps 
came out like stars and the searchlights fenced as with 
swords. It grew chill, but the old brother and sister sat 
fascinated by the disappearance of all their memories under 
the climbing waters. 

They were old and yet they felt themselves children, for 
they stared across the misty years between to the clear 
opposite heights of youth. Their hands unbidden moved to 
each other and clasped fingers. They were the last of their 
generation, though other generations out of their loins were 
gathering their own secrets of sins and griefs to keep from 
their own posterities. 

At length by imperceptible deepenings the cellar walls 
were all engulfed. The lake was an unbroken mirror to the 
placid sky. 

The house and farm of Tuliptree had been. They were 
no more. 

But still the ancient children lingered, numb with cold 
and loneliness and yet at peace, wonderfully at peace. 

Above their heads a motor had stopped in the thick hush 
of the gloaming. Two lovers, thinking themselves alone in 
their world, were whispering and scuffling in amorous play. 
There was a girl’s voice that gasped, “Don’t!” and a man’s 
voice that grumbled, “All right for you!” 

Evidently the world would never lack for lovers. Lovers 
were still coquetting and sulking and making a war of 
opportunity. 

The girl, vexed by her gallant’s too easy discouragement, 
spoke stupidly: 

“I love sunsets, don’t you?” 

“Uh-huh!” 

“The lake’s pretty, don’t you think?” 

“Pretty big for its age. It’s just a new pond, you know, 
to add to New York’s collection. They’re looking for more 


WITHIN THESE WALLS 


363 

water every day. I was reading that they’re planning to tap 
the Adirondacks next, as soon as the Catskills are used up. 

“They’re turning a river around up there now. It was 
flowing west and they’re going to dig under a mountain 
through an eighteen mile tunnel and steal the river, and make 
it run east and south to New York.” 

This titanic work did not interest the girl at all. She 
tried to fetch the youth around to human themes: 

“Somebody was telling me there used to be farms and 
homes down under where the water is now. You can hardly 
believe it!” 

“Ye-ah, people used to live down there, they say.” 

“I wonder what they were like. Nice old-fashioned souls, 
I suppose, good and simple and innocent, and not wicked 
in our modern ways.” 

# “I suppose not. But they didn’t get much out of life, I 
guess. They couldn’t have known what love was. They 
couldn’t have seen anybody down there as pretty as you are.” 

“Don’t! Somebody might see you. It’s getting so dark 
you must drive me home. If Mamma knew I had been out 
here alone with you-!” 

Still there was stealth in the world—joy to be stolen and 
turned into guilt, secrets to be cherished. 

Keith helped Immy to her feet and they struggled toward 
the road out of the night up into the night. 

In the sky to the south the sleepless torches of far-off New 
York were pallidly suspected. The waters below were black 
to their depths, save where the stars slept or twinkled as a 
ripple shook their reflection, or a fish, exploring its new sky, 
broke through into another world. 


THE END. 








\ 






' 











Harper Fiction 


THE VEHEMENT FLAME By Margaret Deland 
Can a man marry a woman twenty years his senior— 
and be happy and remain true to the wife of his choice? 
This—and the Biblical quotation from the Song of 
Solomon: “Love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel 
as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire which 
hath a most vehement flame”—is the basis of Mrs. 
Deland’s latest novel. This book by its sheer bigness 
of theme, will rank above even The Iron Woman and 
The Awakening of Helena Ritchie. 

THE VERTICAL CITY By Fannie Hurst 

New York! The Vertical City! Fannie Hurst has 
daringly inquired into the lives of people who live 
dangerously in this greatest of all monolithic cities, 
and pictured them for us in six whirlwind sketches. 
You will never again think of this author’s shorter 
work as merely short stories, for they are more than 
that—they are vivid impressions of life. 

CONFLICT By Clarence Budington Kelland 
Mystery, love, and strong personalities are brought 
together in this latest Kelland story. It tells 
how a girl made weak and effete by the society 
of the city regained her womanhood when she was 
thrown among those who still believe in the power 
of their fists—and how a rich, hypocritical, old lumber¬ 
man and guardian of his wealthy society-loving niece 
tried to save her soul by breaking her spirit. 

THE PATHLESS TRAIL By Arthur O. Friel 
Arthur O. Friel comes forward with a story of the 
wildest kind of adventure in the only place in America 
where there are still cannibals. It is the strange story 
of a man who thought he had killed another and to 
escape punishment by death fled to Peru. Adventures 
more exciting than Tarzan’s in a land more weird and 
wonderful. 

HARPER & BROTHERS 

Franklin Square New York 





Humor and Drama 

By Distinguished Authors 


THE MAN FROM HOME 

By Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson 
The scene takes place in Italy, and the American 
humor shows up brilliantly against the foreign back¬ 
ground. Illustrated. 

MONNA VANNA By Maurice Maeterlinck 
One of the Belgian poet’s most powerful dramas. 
The scenes are laid at Pisa, Italy, at the end of the 
fifteenth century. Portrait. 

L’AIGLON By Edmond Rostand 

This, the only English edition published of the story 
of the great Napoleon’s unfortunate son, was translated 
by Louis N. Parker. It is illustrated with pictures of 
Miss Maude Adams in the character of the Duke of 
Reichstadt. Illustrated. 

PARTING FRIENDS 

By William Dean Howells 
A farcical scene on an outgoing steamer, when two 
sweethearts can find neither time nor place for tender 
farewells. Readers who like brilliant conversation, un¬ 
restrained fun, and amusing character portrayal will 
find in these farces a rich treat. Illustrated. 

THE MOUSE-TRAP 

By William Dean Howell* 
This volume contains in compact form four of 
Howells’s most popular farces, which have been both 
read and acted with complete enjoyment and success. 
The farces in this volume are: The Garroters, Five- 
o’Clock Tea, The Mouse-Trap, A Likely Story. Illus¬ 
trated. 


HARPER & BROTHERS 

Franklin Square New York 



















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